Product Description

Editorial Reviews - Amazon Essential Video - Alfred Hitchcock takes on Sigmund Freud in this thriller in which psychologist Ingrid Bergman tries to solve a murder by unlocking the clues hidden in the mind of amnesiac suspect Gregory Peck. Among the highlights is a bizarre dream sequence seemingly designed by Salvador Dali--complete with huge eyeballs and pointy scissors. Although the film is in black and white, the original release contained one subliminal blood-red frame, appearing when a gun pointed directly at the camera goes off. Spellbound is one of Hitchcock's strangest and most atmospheric films, providing the director with plenty of opportunities to explore what he called "pure cinema"--i.e., the power of pure visual associations. Miklós Rózsa's haunting score (which features a creepy theremin) won an Oscar, and the movie was nominated for best picture, director, supporting actor (Michael Chekhov), cinematography, and special visual effects. --Jim Emerson--[This text refers to the VHS Tape edition.] ++++DVD FEATURES: This officially licensed release from China is All-Region NTSC Code 0 (playable worldwide) in Black & White, with 4:3 Full Screen Display and Dolby Digital Sound in ENGLISH with optional (removable) Chinese subtitles. Most of the writing on the package is in Chinese.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #56387 in DVD
• Formats: Black & White, Full Screen, Import, NTSC
• Subtitled in: English, Chinese
• Running time: 111 minutes

Customer Reviews

Dreams of Morality Perversion and Exposed Evil
SPELLBOUND was directed by Alfred Hitchcock and produced by David O. Selznick in 1945. As the story unravels it is essentially a murder plot interwoven around psychiatrists and psychoanalysis. It is actually Alfred Hitchcock's approach to the story and his collaborations with composer Miklos Rozsa and surrealist artist Salvador Dali that highlights this film. Gregory Peck plays John "J.B." Ballantine who poses as a psychiatrist while in a state of amnesia. Uncovered by Dr. Constance Peterson played by Ingrid Bergman, Ballantine must find out if he is responsible for the death of the missing psychiatrist that he posed as and simultaneously discover his own identity. Miklos Rozsa's score is both romantic yet eerie as Ballantine tries to remember what happened through analysis of his dreams. Alfred Hitchcock hired Salvador Dali to design illustrations and paintings in order to construct a crisp and vivid rendering of these dreams. Hitchcock did not want to use conventional techniques such as blurred camera shots to recreate the dreams. He wanted them to be as clear and even sharper than the rest of the film. He wanted Dali's style of using shadows, lines of convergence and the idea of infinite distance incorporated into the dream sequences. In the dream sequence we see a black stage highlighted with people at gambling tables with huge mysterious looking eyes peering over them. A man cuts away at the fabric of one eye with a giant scissors revealing another eye. In another part of the dream we see a man standing on a roof behind a chimney that has sprouted roots. The hooded man holds what looks like a deformed or eccentric wagon wheel in his hand. In the distance there is a formation of rocks and boulders, which look like they are sprouting into the shape of a man's head. Another part of the dream shows a man running down a pitched geometric plane as the shadow of a bird follows him. In the background there are geometric shapes and lines that go off into infinity. All these images must be interpreted into experiences from reality. Dali's images are unsettling and thought provoking. Eventually, the eccentric wagon wheel turns out to represent the chambers of a revolver pistol and reveals the true identity of the murderer. A surrealistic painting brings to the canvas an image from reality but puts it into a context of the unreal. I think Dali was successful in translating the realistic elements from the plot into a vision of incomprehensibility of the conscious human mind. Hitchcock and the scriptwriter Ben Hecht then had their characters translate Dali's images back into plausible reality. This is brilliant filmmaking years ahead of its time.

Hitchcock pyscho-thriller at its best
This is, in my opinion, one of Hitchcock's most interesting psychological thrillers. The dream-scapes with the help of Salvadore Dali are phenomenal and add the earie feel of being accompanied by a possible psychopath. Ingrid Bergman as the doting and believing woman standing by her misunderstood and hated man gives one of her best performances. Gregory Peck has never been better than as the neurotic self-loathing victim of his own guilt complex. A wonderful and enjoyable twist and turn of the plot making you wonder all along how we can ever discover the truth. Great filmaking as only Hitchcock could do it.

Much-Maligned Hitchcock Classic Has Enough Cinematic Bravado to Satisfy Fans
There is one scene in Alfred Hitchcock's 1945 classic that epitomizes what's both cinematically unique and logically wrong about the whole venture. Late in the story, comely therapist Dr. Constance Petersen and her inadvertent patient John Brown (or is it Dr. Anthony Edwardes?) set off skiing on an empty, pristine slope in Gabriel Valley. The two attractive stars are obviously shot standing still against an aggressive wind machine in front of a moving screen matte of the Alpine scenery. It's really a concurrently thrilling and silly-looking shot designed to build suspense, and it's easy to dismiss its artifice until it all ends in a key revelation. The rest of the movie suffers from the same conflicting dilemma, i.e., isolated moments of cinematic bravado that interweave with a preposterous Baroque-level storyline.

Written by Ben Hecht and Angus MacPhail, the plot begins with the staff of a country asylum awaiting the arrival of Dr. Edwardes to replace the retiring Dr. Murchison. Enter a man who thinks he's Edwardes until it becomes clear that the real Edwardes has been murdered. In the meantime, the normally reserved Dr. Petersen has become drawn to the young Edwardes doppelganger, who becomes her patient and then her lover. When he is accused of the murder, the couple go on the lam in her desperate hope of finding the truth about his identity and who the murderer really is. Just like Hitchcock's first American picture, the 1940 classic Rebecca, this film was produced by David O. Selznick in his trademark glossy manner, but this time, Selznick appears more confident about his director's abilities as Hitchcock's atmospheric touches are more abundant here. There is even a surreal dream sequence designed by Salvador Dali and one hilariously effective metaphor of doors opening when the lovers kiss.

George Barnes' deep-focus cinematography, Miklos Rozsa's evocative music (though a bit too macabre at times) and James Basevi's art direction are all first-rate. As Petersen, Ingrid Bergman is saddled with a role that has her explaining and probing ad nauseam, but somehow her natural luminescence comes through her professional exterior. Gregory Peck, on the other hand, is more problematic as the traumatized hero since he has to convince us that he could be a murderer when his young and naturally stalwart manner makes such dire emotions rather incredible. Smaller roles are filled expertly with layered work from Leo G. Carroll as Murchison and Michael Chekhof as Peterson's eccentric mentor. In the impressive Hitchcock canon, it is a highly stylized but ultimately middling effort.