‘Will he kiss me or kill me?’ was the original poster tagline for Spellbound, showing an apprehensive Ingrid Bergman in the arms of a preoccupied Gregory Peck, who is holding Bergman with one hand and an open razor with the other. It is a familiar dilemma for a Hitchcock heroine. Here Bergman’s psychiatrist has fallen for Peck’s doctor, who is a suspected murderer and amnesiac with recurrent nightmares that hold the clue to his past and identity. Hollywood had at this time only recently discovered Freud, and although Hitchcock tended to dismiss the film as ‘just another manhunt picture wrapped up in pseudo-psychoanalysis’, it is a pointer to future Freudian themes and the proximity of film to dream in his work that will culminate in such masterpieces as Vertigo and Marnie. With a dream sequence designed by Salvador Dali and a sumptuous Oscar-winning Miklos Rozsa score, this was Hitchcock’s biggest hit of the 1940s and has many audacious visual flourishes: fork-lines on a linen table-cloth that will trigger Peck’s trauma; a succession of opening doors as the couple first kiss; and a fine scene in a white bathroom where Peck, enacting the fear that roams Bergman’s subconscious, discovers the terror that can lurk in everyday objects. As the love-smitten analyst who turns dream-detective, Ingrid Bergman contributes many lovely touches and she is finely supported by some eccentric characterisation, notably from Michael Chekhov (nephew of Anton) as her psychology professor. ‘Good night and happy dreams,’ he says to the honeymoon couple, before adding mischievously, ‘which we will analyse at breakfast.’