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Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated) Binding: VHS Tape Brand: ABC Video EAN: 9786305122685 Format: Black & White, NTSC ISBN: 6305122687 Label: Fox Home Entertainment Manufacturer: Fox Home Entertainment Number Of Items: 1 Publisher: Fox Home Entertainment Release Date: September 10, 1996 Running Time: 111 minutes Sales Rank: 6473 Studio: Fox Home Entertainment Theatrical Release Date: December 28, 1945
Amazon.com essential video: Alfred Hitchcock takes on Sigmund Freud in this thriller in which psychologist Ingrid Bergman tries to solve a murder by unlocking the clues hidden in the mind of amnesiac suspect Gregory Peck. Among the highlights is a bizarre dream sequence seemingly designed by Salvador Dali--complete with huge eyeballs and pointy scissors. Although the film is in black and white, the original release contained one subliminal blood-red frame, appearing when a gun pointed directly at the camera goes off. Spellbound is one of Hitchcock's strangest and most atmospheric films, providing the director with plenty of opportunities to explore what he called "pure cinema"--i.e., the power of pure visual associations. Miklós Rózsa's haunting score (which features a creepy theremin) won an Oscar, and the movie was nominated for best picture, director, supporting actor (Michael Chekhov), cinematography, and special visual effects. --Jim Emerson
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Good Hitchcock
Very good movie from Hitchcock. One of the first movies to delve into psychology. Peck and Bergman are very good. Dali dream sequence of some renown and interest.
Rating: - Perhaps not spellbindg but definitely binding!
Hitchcock elicits a mixed bag of emotions from me. I am just a little too young to have been transfixed, dare I say spellbound?, by the man and his works as millions of Americans were during Hitchcock's peak. Being a callow youth at the tale end, so to speak, of his career and unappreciative of the art I remember that Birds scared the b'jeezus out of me, that I was too young to watch Psycho, and very little else.
Everything else I saw at a later date seemed fine but dated, perhaps quaint. It came as a huge surprise then to finally discover and appreciate the man's art simply by watching ... Read More
Rating: - Spellbound is spellbinding
Not the greatest Hitchcock film, but ironically it has four of Hitchcock's greatest sequences, all of them mind benders as befits a crime story about headshrinkers gone rotten. The famous Salvador Dali dream sequence is everything it has become famous for, a spectacularly subtle and understated seduction sequence - itself almost a dream - and the famous single frame "red flash" at the climactic confrontation. The film is in black and white yet Hitchcock and Selznick induced the company to insert a single or pair of red frames at humongous expense in a subliminal bit that freaked the audiences. ... Read More
Rating: - The touches are here:
the suspenseful off screen murder, camera angles, a cool, classy leading lady & let's not forget the obligatory train scene. A typical Hitchcock psychological thriller. This time, literally. Salvadore Dali was brought in for some surealistic dream sequences. Ingrid Bergman is the beautiful shrink Dr. Peterson. Gregory Peck arrives as her new boss, Dr. Anthony Edwards. Or is he? The real Dr. Edwards has been killed & Peck has assumed his identity. He thinks he may be the killer. One problem. He has amnesia. But Dr. Peterson, up to this time, an ice princess has warmed to Peck & doesn't ... Read More
Rating: - Spellbound
Intriguing and mystifying, this "manhunt story" (as the director described it) is pickled in a heady dose of psychoanalytic dialogue, thanks in part to producer David O. Selznick, an ardent Freudian. Aside from Hitchcock's peerless handling of both the suspense surrounding J.B.'s identity and the love tryst that develops between Peck and Bergman, "Spellbound" remains celebrated because of the unforgettable dream sequence designed by Surrealist artist Salvador Dali (and directed by William Cameron Menzies). For sheer thrills and hypnotic weirdness, all enhanced by Miklos Rozsa's unsettling, Oscar-winning ... Read More
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