25: Spellbound (1945)

SPELLBOUND is a capable little mystery, quite conventional by Hitchcock’s standards despite its famously experimental visuals. In her first of three collaborations with Hitch, Ingrid Bergman holds the center well as newcomer Gregory Peck gets to wander around looking handsome and confused (the partnership will be perfected a year later in Notorious). Though both leads are a little too low energy to work in combination, the slow build of Bergman’s character caps off wonderfully in tense confession scene that’s as good as any in Hitchcock’s career. This film’s real claim to fame, however, is it’s dream sequences, courtesy of famed weirdo Salvador Dalí. An iconoclast through and through, Dalí dabbled in the film world, mostly working with Luis Buñuel but also taking the odd Hollywood gig from time to time. One other example of a Dalí-infused dreamscape is Vincente Minnelli’s wonderful 1950 comedy FATHER OF THE BRIDE, starring Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor. Though the two films share little in theme or narrative, they both serve as enjoyable examples of mid-tier Hollywood filmmaking of the time, an era where audiences weary of World War II were eager for diverting stories with engaging stars.