SYNOPSIS

Psychoanalyst Constance Peterson drops her officious nature when she meets her new boss at a posh Vermont asylum, Dr. Edwardes. As they fall in love, however, she realizes that his headaches and panic attacks mask his knowledge of a murder: he isn't Dr. Edwardes at all, but rather John "J.B." Ballantine, a shell-shocked Army medic whom Edwardes was treating. When Edwardes was murdered, J.B. assumed his identity. But now the police think J.B. is the killer. He and Constance go on the run together to find the truth within his dreams, even if it reveals that he really is the killer.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Producer: David O. Selznick
Screenplay: Ben Hecht, Angus MacPhail
Based on the Novel The House of Dr. Edwardes by Francis Beeding (Hilary St. George Sanders, John Palmer)
Cinematography: George Barnes, Rex Wimpy (uncredited)
Editing: William H. Ziegler, Hal. C. Kern
Art Direction: John Ewing
Music: Miklos Rozsa
Cast: Ingrid Bergman (Dr. Constance Peterson), Gregory Peck (John "J.B." Ballantine), Michael Chekhov (Dr. Alex Brulov), Rhonda Fleming (Mary Carmichael), John Emery (Dr. Fleurot), Leo G. Carroll (Dr. Murchison), Norman Lloyd (Garmes), Steven Geray (Dr. Graff), Paul Harvey (Dr. Hanish), Erskine Sanford (Dr. Galt), Victor Kilian (Sheriff), Wallace Ford (Stranger in Hotel Lobby), Irving Bacon (Gateman), Art Baker (Lt. Cooley), Regis Toomey (Sgt. Gillespie), Alfred Hitchcock (Man Carrying Violin)
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Why Spellbound is Essential

Spellbound was the film in which director Alfred Hitchcock first crystallized his approach to guilt as an incapacitating force, a theme that would run through most of his later films.

Although much of its psychology seems dated today, in 1945 Spellbound was hailed by critics for its use of Freudian psychology as the key to solving a murder. As such, it helped popularize Freudian concepts of psychology to the general audience.

Spellbound was also the first film to present dreams in a Freudian context, with clear images filled with visual symbols that hinted at what was truly going on in the dreamer's mind.

Composer Miklos Rozsa was the first to use the early electronic instrument the theremin in a film score. With Selznick's approval, the film's music score was released as a record - one of the first soundtrack albums in film history (along with Rozsa's previous score for Jungle Book, 1942). It scored a success that inspired other producers to follow suit.

Spellbound was the first U.S. film for which Bergman received top billing.

Hitchcock would go on to make two other pictures with Ingrid Bergman, the phenomenally successful Notorious (1946) and the less popular Under Capricorn (1949). Some biographers have suggested that he was in love with her.

After his successes in two other 1945 releases, The Keys of the Kingdom and The Valley of Decision, established him as a box-office star and romantic idol, Spellbound gave a strong sense of what Gregory Peck could offer as a dramatic actor. The role of an amnesiac tormented by his own forgotten past showed that he could do more than just play the same noble character from film to film and pointed the way to the more psychologically complex characters he would continue to play in such films as Twelve O'Clock High and The Gunfighter (both 1949).

by Frank Miller