Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound

A sporadically intriguing yet hopelessly bloated thriller, Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound follows psychiatrist Constance Petersen (Ingrid Bergman) as she attempts to ferret out the mysterious past of an amnesia-afflicted patient (Gregory Peck’s John Ballantyne) – with the romance that eventually ensues between the two characters complicating matters considerably. (It doesn’t help, either, that John is eventually accused of murder.) Filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock does an effective job of initially luring the viewer into the decidedly lush proceedings, as Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound boasts an appealing visual sensibility that’s heightened by Ben Hecht’s unapologetically melodramatic screenplay. The promise of the movie’s early sequences gives way to a thoroughly underwhelming midsection, however, with Hecht’s script placing a growing emphasis on sequences of a talky and decidedly less-than-engrossing nature. (There are, for example, far too many instances in which the characters engage in long, hopelessly dull conversations revolving around psychiatry and psychoanalysis.) The far-from-captivating atmosphere is compounded by an almost painfully overlong running time, and while the inclusion of a few unexpected third-act revelations briefly perks one’s interest, Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound stands as a rare misfire within Hitch’s otherwise solid body of work.

** out of ****

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