SPELLBOUND Presented by Ankita Podder ( Department of Film Studies, Jadavpur University)
SPELLBOUN
PLOT
Dr. Constance Petersen (Ingrid Bergman)
is a psychoanalyst at Green Manors, a therapeutic community mental hospital in Vermont.
She is perceived by the other (male) doctors as detached and emotionless. The
director of the hospital, Dr. Murchison (Leo G. Carroll),
is being forced into retirement, shortly after returning from an absence due to
nervous exhaustion. His replacement is Dr. Anthony Edwardes (Gregory Peck),
who turns out to be surprisingly young.
Petersen
notices that this Edwardes has a peculiar phobia about
sets of parallel lines against a white background. She also soon realizes, by
comparing handwriting, that this man is not the real Edwardes, but an impostor.
He confides to her that he has killed the real Edwardes and has taken his
place. He suffers from massive amnesia and
does not know who he is. Petersen believes he is innocent and that he is
suffering from a guilt complex. He disappears overnight, leaving
a note for her. At the same time, it becomes public knowledge that the supposed
Edwardes is an impostor, and that the real Edwardes is missing and may have
been murdered.
The
two doctors analyze a dream that Brown had. The dream sequence (designed
by Salvador Dalí) is full of psychoanalytic symbols –
eyes, curtains, scissors, playing cards (some of them blank), a man with no
face, a man falling off a building, a man hiding behind a chimney and dropping
a wheel, and being pursued by large wings. They deduce that Brown and Edwardes
had been on a ski trip together (the lines in white being ski tracks), and that
Edwardes had somehow died there. Petersen and Brown go to the Gabriel Valley
ski resort (the wings provide a clue), to reenact the event.
Near the bottom of the hill, Brown suddenly recovers from
his amnesia.
He recalls that there is a precipice in front of them, over which Edwardes fell
to his death. He stops them just in time. He also remembers a traumatic event
from his childhood – he slid down a hand rail with his brother at the
bottom, accidentally knocking him onto sharp-pointed railings, killing him.
This incident had caused him to develop a guilt complex. He also remembers that his real
name is John Ballantyne. All is understood now, and Ballantyne is about to be
exonerated, when it is discovered that Edwardes had a bullet in his body.
Ballantyne is convicted of murder and sent to prison.
A
heartbroken Petersen returns to her position at the hospital, where Murchison
is once again the director. Murchison lets slip that he had known Edwardes
slightly and did not like him, contradicting his earlier statement that they
had never met. Now suspicious, Petersen reconsiders her notes from the dream
and realizes that the wheel was a revolver, and that the man hiding behind the
chimney and dropping the wheel was Murchison, who shot Edwardes and then
dropped the gun.
Petersen
confronts Murchison. He confesses but says that he still has the gun and
threatens to kill her. She walks away, the gun pointed at her, explaining that
while the first murder was committed under the extenuating circumstances of
Murchison's fragile mental state, her murder would certainly lead him to
the electric chair. He allows her to leave then
turns the gun on himself. Petersen is then reunited with Ballantyne. They leave
on their honeymoon together from Grand Central Terminal, where they had begun
their investigation of his psychosis.
First of all Petersen have a doubt on Edwardes, to clarify that she is try to verify his signature. After doing this she is 100% sure that the person who is claiming himself by Edwardes he is wrong person.
Petersen try to know that who is he?
Now the person try to answer Petersen's question's
Now the person write a letter foe Petersen.
When Petersen know the person is John Brown & he is suffering from ''Amnesia'' Petersen manages to track him down and starts to use her psychoanalytic training to break his amnesia and find out what really happened.
- Article of Spellbound........
- https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=spellbound+movie&oq=#d=gs_qabs&u=%23p%3DweKf9g-Em-EJ
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=spellbound+movie&oq=#d
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