Movies

"Spellbound" is probably one of Hitchcock's most uneven films. It has some brilliant scenes (like the point-of-view shot near the end) that showcase Hitchcock's mastery and imagination, but it also has too many talky sequences and it takes too much time to reach its less-than-satisfying conclusion. Hitchcock relies heavily on psychological theories for his explanations, but I think that those explanations are far too simplistic. The "decoding" of the weird dream sequences is also too literal: every image has a definite and obvious meaning - does that ever happen in YOUR dreams? The low point is, for me, the explanation that the movie provides for the wheel's presence in the dream.