Director: Alfred Hitchcock
When I watch a film like Spellbound, it's easy to see why Hitchcock was thought of as an excellent populist director until the French New Wave came along. The plot of Spellbound is so terrifically stupid and so unbelievably hokey that it's almost embarrassing. Even Sigmund Freud would be ashamed to have his psychiatric work on display here. And yet, it still works.
Hitchcock's films are all a direct stab at the psyche of the viewer - he's looking to get in my head. Once he's in there, it doesn't really matter what the plot is, I'm so caught up in the tension. His protagonists are often posed with a very simple moral dilemma; the protagonist makes one choice, and their fate is spun out of that choice. In Spellbound, that choice is a simple lie, which compounds into further untruths.
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