Spellbound

3/5 stars

Another of Hitchcock’s movies. Andrew and I are going through them all (unless we get bored). The last couple that we’ve watched, Notorious and Saboteur, were kind of dull. I enjoyed this one more than Andrew did. I think it was partly because of Ingrid Bergman’s character. She is a psychiatrist helping a man suffering from amnesia and a guilt complex who posed as the new head of the institution (played by Gregory Peck). In some ways her character is a fairly strong female role model, especially for the time the movie was made. However, her lapse into puppy-dog-in-love woman got a bit annoying (and unbelievable).

Also, the closing scene was very familiar. I can’t think of where I’d seen it before, since I’ve never seen this film before. It’s the scene where a man’s hand holding a gun are seen in the foreground as the gun follows Ingrid Bergman’s character out of the gun-holder’s office. Then the hand turns the gun around so that it is facing the camera, and pulls the trigger. A flash of red, and the screen goes blank. This is going to bug me.