| A Maverick's Darkling Vision (Freud Notwithstanding) |
|
| written by WimsWings |
April 2, 2007 - 12:37 AM PDT |
Spellbound is the first Hitchcock title I've rented from the esteemed Criterion series, and I'm already hunting around to see what else is available...Strangers on a Train, perhaps? It was, in fact, the latter title - one of those Film Studies compulsories - that ended up leaving a mark with its noir-ish twinning and the director's psychological bent.
While Spellbound mines similar themes - specifically how appearances never tell the whole story - the whole is decidedly more pedigreed with the addition of Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck (even with a seemingly elusive mad man lurking about a mental asylum). Adapted from the "Francis Beeding" novel The House of Dr. Edwardes, Spellbound is that iffy gambit known as a contractually bound vanity project i.e. David O. Selznick wanted Hitchcock to direct a film based on the studio head's own experience with psychoanalysis.
In return we get a narrow character study of a professional woman who dives headlong into romance with a man she hardly knows, while a bunch of male colleagues cluck their tongues and share a wink at the expense of Bergman's otherwise stolid analyst. Of course, Peck is ideal as the handsome man who may not be who he says he is. But the surrealistic dream sequence conceived by Salvador Dali - much embattled according to the DVD extras - was probably not part of Selznick's vision. In spite of its penchant for allowing a woman to only inhabit either a professional role or a romantic one, lest she lose her head, Spellbound has much to recommend, including a stylish screen couple, one particularly inspired camera vantage and Dali's intriguing set piece. |
|
|
Your cart
© 2006 All Media Guide, LLC. Portions of content provided by All Movie Guide®,
a trademark of All Media Guide, LLC.