Spellbound (Hitchcock, 1945) Dream Analysis

 

 Wikipedia Plot: 

Dr. Constance Petersen is a psychoanalyst at Green Manors, a therapeutic community mental hospital in Vermont. She is perceived by the other doctors as detached and emotionless. The director of the hospital, Dr. Murchison, is being forced into retirement shortly after returning from an absence due to nervous exhaustion. His replacement is Dr. Anthony Edwardes, who turns out to be surprisingly young. Petersen is immediately smitten with Edwardes.

They fall in love. One day, while they are kissing, however, Petersen notices that this Edwardes has a peculiar phobia about sets of parallel lines against a white background. She compares Edwardes' signature on a letter to her with an autographed copy of one of his books, realizing that they do not match and he is an impostor. He confides to her that he has killed the real Edwardes and taken his place. He suffers from amnesia and does not know who he really is: he appears to be suffering a Dissociative fugue. Petersen believes he is innocent and that he is suffering from a guilt complex. He disappears overnight, leaving a note for her. At the same time, it becomes public knowledge that the supposed Edwardes is an impostor, and that the real Edwardes is missing and may have been killed.

Petersen manages to track him down to a New York City hotel, where he is living under the pseudonym John Brown. Despite his insistence for her to leave, Petersen insists on psychoanalyzing him to break through his amnesia and uncover his former memories. Pursued by the police through Grand Central Terminal, the two travel by train to Rochester, New York, where they stay with Dr. Alexander Brulov, Petersen's former mentor.

The two doctors analyze a dream that Brown had. He is playing cards in a mysterious club when a scantily-clad woman resembling Petersen starts kissing everybody there. His card partner, an older man, is accused of cheating and threatened by the club's masked proprietor. The scene changes to the older man standing on the precipice of a sloped roof; he falls off, and the proprietor is found to be standing behind a chimney and dropping a wheel he held in his hands. Brown's dream concludes with him being chased down a hill by a great pair of wings.

Petersen and Brulov conclude that Brown's phobia of dark lines on white is based on ski tracks in the snow, the older man in his dream is the real Edwardes, and he met his demise in a skiing accident. They use the detail of the wings to deduce that it must have been the Gabriel Valley ski lodge. Brown and Petersen travel there, planning on recreating the circumstances of Edwardes' death, despite fears that Brown may impulsively kill again in the same situation if he really were Edwardes' murderer.

As they go down the slope, Brown remembers details of his former life: he has a guilt complex, rooted in a childhood accident where he killed his brother by knocking him onto a spiked fence. He also recalls that Edwardes fell off the cliff in front of them, and is able to stop himself and Petersen just in time. He recounts his memories to Petersen back in the ski lodge, most notably that his real name is John Ballantyne. The police arrive, reveal that they found Edwardes' body where Ballantyne claimed it would be, but with a bullet wound in his back. Ballantyne is arrested, tried, and convicted of murder.

A heartbroken Petersen returns to her position at the hospital, where Murchison is once again the director. Murchison lets slip that he knew Edwardes slightly and did not like him, contradicting his earlier statement that they had never met. This inspires Petersen to re-examine her notes of Ballantyne's dream: the masked proprietor represents Murchison, the wheel represents a revolver, and Murchison therefore murdered Edwardes and left the gun on the ski slope.

Petersen confronts Murchison in his office to prove her hunch; she relates Ballantyne's dream to Murchison, getting him to admit that the masked proprietor likely represents himself. She presents her accusation, and Murchison replies that she got every detail right but one: he still has the revolver, and draws it on her. Petersen reasons with Murchison as she walks out of his office to phone the police, pointing out that while he could plea insanity and get a lesser charge for Edwardes' murder, shooting her would guarantee his execution. She leaves the office, and Murchison turns the gun on himself.

The final scene shows Petersen and Ballantyne, now married, receiving well-wishes from Dr. Brulov before departing on their honeymoon at Grand Central Terminal.