Spellbound (1945) | Presenting Hitchcock Podcast

Gooooood evening. In this months episode of Presenting Hitchcock, Cory and Aaron dig deep into their minds as they discuss “Spellbound.”

Picture Title: Spellbound (1945)

Written by: 

Screenplay by Ben Hecht

Suggested by the novel “The House of Dr. Edwards” by John Palmer and Hilary St George Saunders

Starring: Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck, Michael Chekhov, Leo G. Carroll, Rhonda Fleming, John Emery, and Norman Lloyd

Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock

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Our Favourite Trivia:

Director Cameo: Coming out of the elevator at the Empire Hotel carrying a violin case and smoking a cigarette.

Spellbound was made over contract disagreements between Alfred Hitchcock and producer David O. Selznick. Hitchcock’s contract with Selznick began in March 1939, but only resulted in three films: Spellbound, Rebecca (1940) and The Paradine Case (1947). (Notorious was sold to RKO in mid-production.) 

One of the first Hollywood movies to deal with psychoanalysis. Screenwriter Ben Hecht consulted many of the leading psychoanalysts of the day. Selznick had wanted Hitchcock to make a film based upon Selznick’s own positive experience with psychoanalysis; Selznick, at Hitchcock’s suggestion, purchased the rights to the 1927 novel The House of Dr. Edwardes by Hilary St. George Saunders and John Palmer (who had co-written it under the pseudonym Francis Beeding), for approximately $40,000.

Early versions of the script used the words “sex menace”, “frustrations”, “libido”, and “tomcat” in scenes involving the character of Mary Carmichael. These were eliminated when Product Code administration director Joseph Breen strongly objected.

Alfred Hitchcock was a big admirer of Salvador Dalí’s work, and realized that no one understood dream imagery better. Producer David O. Selznick was opposed to using Dalí from an expense point of view, until he realized the marketing mileage that could be gained from such a hiring. The sequence was supposed to run for 20 minutes. It included a scene in a ballroom with hanging pianos and still figures pretending to dance, followed by John Ballantyne (Gregory Peck) dancing with Dr. Petersen (Ingrid Bergman), who then turns into a statue. In order to create the illusion of a room of great size, little people were used in the background on a scaled-down set, which did not satisfy Alfred Hitchcock or Dali.

The dream sequence was produced by “Poverty Row” studio Monogram Studios. Its initial efforts kept getting rejected by producer David O. Selznick, until he hired production designer William Cameron Menzies to oversee the production. Alfred Hitchcock was barely involved. According to Donald Spoto, William Cameron Menzies was disappointed at what he considered an unappealing dream sequence, and asked to remain uncredited for it. When the sequence received critical and audience acclaim, Hitchcock was happy to take the credit.

Although this movie is in black-and-white, two frames where the gunshot goes off while pointed at the camera are tinted red.

The Shakespeare quotation at the start of this movie is an abbreviated version of something that Cassius said to Brutus in Act 1 Scene 2 of “Julius Caesar”. The full quotation is “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

Producer David O. Selznick wanted Miklós Rózsa to swell the orchestra from fourteen violins to twenty-eight, as he had liked the effect that that had brought when Franz Waxman did it while scoring Rebecca (1940). In addition, Selznick was dissatisfied with Rozsa’s musical cue for the skiing sequence, and replaced it with one from Waxman’s score for Suspicion (1941). Rózsa’s score for Spellbound inspired Jerry Goldsmith to become a film composer.

The first preview took place on September 27, 1944, after which producer David O. Selznick deleted an opening montage showing treatment of mental cases. After principal photography was completed, Selznick was involved with sound re-recording of the dialogue and the editing, eliminating about fourteen minutes of the movie.

Both Bergman and Peck were married to others at the time of production—Bergman to Petter Aron Lindström, and Peck to Greta Kukkonen—but they had a brief affair during filming. Their secret relationship became public knowledge when Peck confessed to Brad Darrach of People in an interview in 1987, five years after Bergman’s death. “All I can say is that I had a fiery kinda love for her, and I think that’s where I ought to stop… I was young. She was young. We were involved for weeks in close and intense work.”

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Next up, we’ll be discussing “Rebecca”

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