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Rating:
In 1945, while in Italy one could finally read the testimonies of Levi and Silone, in which, in the remote Italian boot and far from the cities, only the echoes of the great History arrive, in London people look elsewhere, and in the middle-class salons, Hitchcock (I apologize to the admirers of this giant for these two words written lightly) flirts in his own way, a bit with great History and a bit with great Culture, perfectly weaving the plots of his detective films. He does so with psychoanalysis. However, if Freud has influenced literature, shaking it from the ground up and overturning everything, from the plot to the trust in the narrator himself, in Spellbound the exploration of the unconscious appears as the theme of the story, attaching itself, but not eliminating, the classic structure that revolves around a mysterious crime and the identification of evidence, motives, and real or apparent culprits.
A story is told that takes place around the Green Manors psychiatric clinic. Already on the verge of retirement, Dr. Murchison, the clinic's director, is invited to take the long-awaited rest early due to a nervous breakdown: to replace him, after a period of co-presence, will be a certain Dr. Antonio Edwardes. However, shortly after the arrival of the new director and after falling in love with him, the cold, talented, and promising Dr. Constance Petersen will discover that the newcomer (respectively played by the two stars, Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck) is not really the expected Dr. Edwardes, but a young man afflicted by strange phobias and an acute form of amnesia.
The lovestruck doctor decides to help him, but when suspicions of the real Edwardes' murder surround the young man, the two are forced to flee in order to continue investigating the young man's dark past and thus try to clear him of the disgraceful charge.
As usual, the truth is closer than it might appear, but the young man's mind is so full of fog that the path to reach it is tortuous, difficult, and full of twists. It is Dr. Brulov, an eccentric luminary, portrayed by the Oscar-nominated Aleksandr Pavlovich Chekhov, nephew of Anton's giant, who hides the two lovers from the police and helps the doctor bring the lover's unconscious out of the fog.
The alternation of mystery and discovery, suspense and surprise, is so well balanced that the film hooks the viewer to the screen for two hours, and the age is felt and only briefly amuses when observing the easy and impetuous love of the cold doctor or the cinematic image of the enamored woman.
Obviously, to be revisited.
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