1945 · thriller · mystery · romance
Spellbound
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock1h 51m1945
When Dr. Anthony Edwardes arrives at a Vermont mental hospital to replace the outgoing hospital director, Dr. Constance Peterson, a psychoanalyst, discovers Edwardes is actually an impostor. The man confesses that the real Dr. Edwardes is dead and fears he may have killed him, but cannot recall anything. Dr. Peterson, however is convinced his impostor is innocent of the man's murder, and joins him on a quest to unravel his amnesia through psychoanalysis.
Our read: Spellbound (1945) reads as a sombre, kinetic, inventive thriller · mystery · romance entry — measured in intensity, mid-stakes in scope, measured in temperature, ambivalent in outlook.
Sombre, kinetic, measured thriller / mystery, inventive in texture. Ambivalent, mid-stakes, measured.
- sombre
- brisk
- intense
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How Spellbound feels to watch.
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What watching it is actually like.
“You want Hitchcock psycho-romance, dream imagery, and amnesia mystery tension.”
Skip it tonight — Skip if black-and-white Freudian talk or slow 1940s pacing loses you fast.
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