78
Metascore
16 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- The Salvador Dalí-designed dream sequence is still a dazzler, and deciphering it points to the real killer. Analysis the way it oughta be!
- 100Chicago TribuneMichael WilmingtonChicago TribuneMichael WilmingtonBased on Francis Beeding's The House of Dr. Edwardes, scripted by Ben Hecht, and with Salvador Dali's notorious surreal dream sequence as a shocking interlude, this was one of Hitchcock's most romantic and popular '40s movies; it's also the source of most of Mel Brooks' parody High Anxiety. [26 Nov 1999, p.A]
- 88Boston GlobeBoston GlobeA fascinating, grim, exciting motion picture, based on the current popular interest in psychiatry, and illustrating a new method of crime detection. [25 Jan 1946, p.17]
- 80The New York TimesBosley CrowtherThe New York TimesBosley CrowtherNot to be speechless about it, David O. Selznick has a rare film in Spellbound.
- 80The Observer (UK)The Observer (UK)Trail-blazing tale of murder at an American mental hospital that helped make the sympathetic Freudian shrink a Hollywood standby. [24 Aug 2011, p.56]
- 75Chicago ReaderDave KehrChicago ReaderDave KehrThe gaudy Freudianism of this 1945 Hitchcock film, backed by a dream sequence designed by Salvador Dalí and an overexcited score by Miklós Rósza, can make it hard to take, but beneath the facile trappings there is an intriguing Hitchcockian study of role reversal, with doctors and patients, men and women, mothers and sons inverting their assigned relationships with compelling, subversive results.
- An intriguing Hitchcock thriller which probes the dark recesses of a man's mind through psychoanalytic treatment and the love of a woman.
- 70Time OutTime OutSpellbound is also a tale of suspense, and Hitchcock embellishes it with characteristically brilliant twists, like the infinite variety of parallel lines which etch their way through Peck's mind.
- 40The New YorkerPauline KaelThe New YorkerPauline KaelYet, with all the obvious ingredients for success, Spellbound is a disaster.