Spellbound

Synopsis: Girl meets boy, they fall in love, then they find out if he's a killer.

One of Hitchcock's more thoughtful and delicate films, I really loved this. Ingrid Bergman plays a psychiatrist at a rural mental institution. They recieve a new head psychiatrist (Gregory Peck) to take over from Dr Murchison who is retiring. All seems well. Very quickly Greg and Ingrid fall in love. There is a great scene in which they first kiss that kick starts everything from then on. As soon as they declare their love, Ingrid discovers that Greg is not all that he seems and the story takes a thrilling turn.

Greg and Ingrid realise that he is not the doctor that he is supposed to be but Greg has amnesia and can't remember who he really is. Cue a riveting tale of false murder charges and selective bad memories coming back to Greg, all the while on the run from the law, with Ingrid in tow.

They end up at her old Professor's house for some ace scenes in which we see Greg have one of his odd memories/associations, pick up a cut throat razor and wander through the house at night. We're left not knowing if he has killed either Ingrid or her Prof but soon are relieved to learn that the Prof had worked it all out and given Greg some bromide to put him to sleep before he caused any harm.

Eventually the case is solved by the lovebirds but not before some soul searching from Greg and some crazy dream sequences designed by Salvador Dali. What I really liked about the story, and perhaps all of Hitchcock's films, is the underlying ideas. What's he really saying about love by having Greg not be what he makes out and by having Ingrid almost blindly faithful in her belief of his innocence? Is he saying that we can be blinded by lust and intense emotion as to the real or sometimes imagined bad side to our new beau?

Many other stories/films have explored this with Hitchcock's own Suspicion up there among them.

More info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038109/