Spellbound : Alfred Hitchcock

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I was willing to start Hitchcock with either Psycho [1960] or Birds [1963]. Nonetheless, like Godard’s Contempt [1963], I have begun with Hitchcock’s Spellbound [1945], again for the sake of Cannes Classics 2023.

 

Everyone says Hitchcock is a master of suspense. My first experience with Hitchcockian thrilling and suspense is quite disappointing as per my great expectation.

 

The method of therapeutic practices of mental sufferings and personality disorders through Freudian psychoanalysis are exercised in the movie with philosophical and aesthetic touches. But it disheartens me to keep the fair balance between cinematic narrative structures and literary worthiness.

 

Two things have just imprinted the finest impressions on my mind. First the dream sequences, designed by Salvador Dalí, especially where Ballantyne [Gregory Peck] was running away down to the hill; as a tool of  curing amnesia. The composition and the motion are the iconic one to me. The other thing is the broad application of the guilty complex and its reverse representation of the innocence complex of Dr. Murchison [Leo G. Carroll] to sort out the mystery.




 

 

 

Spellbound [1945]

Alfred Hitchcock

English, USA

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