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Spellbound 19459/25/2023 Given a standard he had already given us with examples from THE 39 STEPS or YOUNG AND INNOCENT through THE LADY VANISHES in the UK, or FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT and SHADOW OF A DOUBT here in the US, this film seems not up to his true capacities, and like his other Selznick-produced American film, REBECCA, seems both overfussy and filled with emphases and spoonfeeding of details which Hitch himself would never have given us. One could easily make excuses for this film based on "it was only 1945" or "what people knew about psychoanalysis was still naive", etc., but even taken in context of its time it's a pretty silly film without the kind of sustained surety of style leavened with simultaneous suspense, intelligence, taste and humor that he had already proved he could do so well from more than ten years earlier. There is something to be said for Miklos Rozsa's score as well: although it edges a bit far into soupy overscoring, the expressive main theme has quality, and his use of the theremin (which he also employed in his score for THE LOST WEEKEND at virtually the same time) is striking and represented "something new" in film music. Also worth a look are the brief but truly unusual Dali-designed dream sequences. Peck has never been more handsome, in a strangely fragile way. The scenes with Bergman, Peck and Chekhov are the highlight of the film, and I have to admit that I'm even kind of fond of the hotel lobby scene, with the appealingly breezy Bill Goodwin (of "Burns and Allen" radio fame) as the house detective. It almost becomes another (and far more palatable) film at this point. Brulov, the film suddenly kicks into what we might call "classic British Hitch mode," with the kind of understated wit and ensemble playing the director had been doing so well since the early 30's. About midway through the picture, when Michael Chekhov appears as Dr. Selznick! That being said (along with the fact that the story doesn't really add up to much of anything, since all the premises on which it's based seem so shaky, naive and downright goofy), the film has some things going for it. Yes, I know this was made in the 40's, but the first 20 to 30 minutes of the film have more sexist moments and infantile behavior by supposed doctors than one would ever expect from either Hitch or Ben Hecht. What I had forgotten about was how almost impossibly silly all the psychoanalytical claptrap is, especially in the first couple of reels, which thereby make us feel very quickly that we're not quite in the mature, masterful grip of Hitch's usual wit and taste. My memories of it were not that fond - I recalled it as an unusually melodramatic and not very convincing thriller enlivened by a very attractive cast. I recently saw this film on the large screen after having not seen it for over 10 years. I would have liked to shoot Dali's dreams on location so that everything would be flooded with light and become terribly high-pitched, but I was refused this and had to shoot in the studio." I was anxious because the production did not want to make certain expenses. Naturally, Dali invented some rather strange things that it was not possible to achieve. I wanted Dali because of the sharp aspect of his architecture (.) - the long shadows, the infinity of the distances, the lines which converge towards the perspective. The only reason was my desire to achieve very visual dreams with sharp, clear strokes, in an image clearer than that of the film precisely. Selznick agreed but I'm sure he thought I wanted Dali because of the publicity it would give us. I asked Selznick to make sure the Salvador Dali's collaboration. "When we got to the dream sequences, I really wanted to break with the tradition of cinematic dreams which are usually hazy and confusing, with the screen shaking, etc. On his interviews with François Truffaut (for a book published in 1966), Hitchcock says: Alfred Hitchcock originally wanted Josef von Sternberg to shoot it, but he ended by directing it himself, working closely with Dali.While the movie was in production, Selznick promoted it as "Dali's Dream", capitalizing on Dali's recognition by the American public and the press. The dream sequence was to be produced by poverty-row studio Monogram, and met with rejections by producer David O.
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