Carty, Victoria. "Textual Portrayals of Female Athletes: Liberation of Nuanced Forms of Patriarchy?" Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 26.2 (2005): 132-172.

In Victoria Carty's article, she explores the portrayal of female athletes in today’s media by looking at print ads and television and radio commentary within the context of the radical feminist and post-feminist discourse. Carty states that while radical feminists embrace women’s increased opportunities to participate and thrive in competitive sports, they argue that the commoditization and subsequent exploitation of female athletes’ sexuality not only diminishes their athletic accomplishments but also reinforces the strength of the patriarchal system. On the other hand, post-feminists do not accept the objectification of women, but instead choose to work within the male-centered system that their radical feminist counterparts abhor. By choosing to use their sexuality as strength, post-feminists work to change the system from within by using the attributes that were once deemed as impediments to their advantage. Carty ultimately argues that female athletes and their supporters must ignore the oppressive qualities of commercialized competitive sports and instead use sports to their advantage.

While the film itself does not center around sports (although it is interesting to note that Dr. Peterson is characterized as a frustrated gymnast and avid swimmer during her introduction to Dr. Edwardes), the article becomes relevant to Spellbound if one approaches the work environment of Green Manors as a place not of competitive athletes, but of competitive intellectuals. Obviously there are differences between physical and mental competition, but in many ways the environments created by the competitive attitude are remarkably similar. The treatment of Dr. Peterson played by Ingrid Bergman is extremely similar to the atmosphere that Carty argues many female athletes encounter in today’s culture. While it appears that Dr. Peterson attempts to obscure her sexuality by wearing glasses and a baggy and unflattering lab coat in her work environment, a move that would find favor with radical feminist ideology, she also builds and nurtures strong relationships with her male coworkers, which according to post-feminists is one way to reinforce one’s heterosexuality and appear less threatening to the in-control males. Dr. Peterson constantly is forced to play within the boundaries that society has set up for her, case in point is her later encounter with the hotel detective. While she is portrayed as a strong female through out the film, she can never escape the behavioral expectations that force her altar her action and strategy in order to conform to the laws of men.

Burns Ardolino, Wendy A. " Reading Woman: Dispacing the Foundations of Femininity." Hypatia 18.3 (Summer 2003): 42-59.

In her article, Burns-Ardolino explores the connection between restrictive foundation garments (bras, girdles, etc) and the restricted role that women are allowed to take in society. The study examines the role of restrictive clothing over time and how specific articles of clothing have influenced women’s ability to take on non-restrictive societal roles. Burns-Ardolino references many scholars who argue that the use of foundation garments including the girdle serve the same function for American society as foot-binding once served in Chinese society. Burns-Ardolino argues that in order for women to occupy multiple societal roles, they must take a page from the radical feminists of the past and rid themselves completely of any article of clothing that inhibits movement and undermines their strength.

Spellbound does not spend a great deal of time focusing on the restrictive undergarments that Dr. Peterson may or may not be wearing. However, one interesting exchange occurs after Dr. Peterson returns to dinner with her male colleagues after her walk with Dr. Edwardes through the countryside. In this conversation, which seems at times more like a confrontation, Dr. Fluerot notices Dr. Peterson’s changed appearance and proceeds to say “Gentleman notice her stockings, the lady has been climbing trees.” Throughout the beginning of the film Dr. Fleurot encourages Dr. Peterson to becomes more womanly and embrace her restrained sexuality. However, once Dr. Peterson ignores the restrictions of both her sexuality and her undergarments (in this case represented by the torn stockings) she is chided by her male counterparts for ignoring the all-important physical restrictions that define her as a woman in that society. Ultimately, she is forced to return to her role as a submissive female, characterized by wearing glasses and restrictive clothing. She once again serves more as an object for men to gaze at rather than as a whole person unto herself. While the article itself focuses on the use of clothing to restrict women’s power, one could argue that in Spellbound, Hitchcock’s use of steady close-ups and his request that Bergman limit her physical movement serve the same purpose as a girdle or stockings. Once again, the character of Dr. Peterson becomes an object to be looked upon rather than a person who can not only exist, but also engage society.

Gelley, Ora. "Ingrid Bergman's Star Persona and the Alien Space of Stromboli." Cinema Journal 47.2 (2008): 26-51.

Gelley tracks the course of Ingrid Bergman's career, moving from her beginnings in Sweden, to her time in WWII era Germany, to the peak of her popularity in Hollywood, and finally to her films and romantic entanglements with the famed director Roberto Rossellini. Over the course of this article, Gelley addresses many issues but places a continual focus on the shifting acceptance and use of Bergman's sexuality. Gelley states that while off-screen (until the time of her affair with Rossellini) Bergman was portrayed as innocent and virtuous, on screen she often took on the roles of “the other woman,” prostitutes, or women with questionable morals. Bergman’s sexuality was not only affected by the roles that she took on, but also by the methods of acting that she (and at times her directors) chose to utilize in each of her films. The restrained movement that characterized her collaborations with Hitchcock allowed her to achieve success in Hollywood and with the American people. However, when Bergman began to work with Rossellini her movement and acting method reflected an actor, and subsequently a group of characters, that embraced her own sexuality. While Gelley argues that it is this acceptance of female power that alienated Bergman from her Hollywood fan base, it also allowed her characters to become not only representations of strong women, but also to become central to Rossellini’s commentary on the state of Europe after World War II.

Addressing Bergman’s work in Spellbound, Gelley highlight Hitchcock’s influence, arguing that it was Hitchcock who urged Bergman to restrain her movement and focused the camera and subsequently the audience on the drama of her minuet facial expressions. With her body either out of frame of covered by unflattering outfits, Hitchcock neutralized Bergman’s capacity for the expression of overt sexuality. This fascination with Bergman’s face might have begun with Spellbound, but in Hitchcock’s next film with Bergman, Notorious, the director took the idea of the close-up to the extreme, including approximately 191 close-ups and extreme close-ups in a 101-minute film. Like Notorious, in Spellbound the close-ups ultimately undermine the strength of the female character, neutralizing the power that she posses within the plot of the film and instead relegating her to role of a emotionally involved, but ultimately passive player.

Young Bruehl, Elizabeth. "Where Do We Fall When We Fall In Love." Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society 8.2 (2003): 279-288.

This article looks at a scientific approach to love and how Freud’s ideas about love distance themselves from the strictly Darwinian approach to the act of falling and being in love. The article explores the various reasons why people fall in love and are attracted to the idea of falling and being in love. These ideas include chemical reactions that force the brain into thinking that it is in love, a deep-rooted narcissism that subconsciously forces people to seek approval through love in others, and an idealization of the other in order to idealize ourselves (the last two idea are closely linked). The article ultimately argues that the desire to be loved or the act of being in love is not caused by one’s desire to love another or genuine admiration for another person. Instead, Young-Bruehl says that the amphetamine rush accompanied by the idealization of a partner tricks the brain and the person into believing not that he or she is in love but that he or she can be loved.

This article is particularly interesting when looked at within the context of the character of Dr. Constance Peterson. The character herself notes that love is not an emotional response but a series of chemical reactions. She states that love is a powerful illusion until she herself feels the pull of love when she falls for the mysterious John Ballantine. Just as Dr. Peterson follows to a tee the evolutionary response to an attractive man with feelings of love, she also exhibits the signs of mania that Freud and his followers argue follows the period of mourning over a romantic loss. In the case of Dr. Peterson, this loss manifests itself through her quest to free John Ballantine and to prove his innocence. Ultimately the two end up together, happy. But according to the article if the film peaked in on the two lovebirds down the line we would not find a happy couple. Instead we would find two people who had come off their amphetamine highs only to realize that their ideal mates were in reality surrogate receptors for the love that they wish they could give themselves.

Erb, Cynthia. "'Have You Ever Seen the Inside of One of Those Places?': Psycho, Foucault, and the Postwar Context of Madness." Cinema Journal 45.4 (2006) 45-63.

Erb's article examines the post World War II phenomenon of deinstitutionalization. Occurring after several exposes brought to light the poor conditions and decrepitude of mental institutions as well as several films that featured institutions in a negative light, deinstitutionalization came about because of both the financial pressures that were acknowledged by the federal government and the moral questions that were raised by the public. The shifting attitude toward institutionalization was also affected by the influx of veterans with traumatic stress disorders and acquired nervous conditions after World War II. The idea that many people in society were afflicted with mental disorders, not only a select few, dramatically changed the perception of mental illness within the United States.

Erb goes onto argue that while films like Spellbound use mental illness as a tool to advance the plot and feature mental afflictions that are easily “cured” within the course of the film, Hitchcock’s later works The Wrong Man (1956), Vertigo (1958), and Psycho (1960) all address mental illness and instability as something that cannot be cured and that remains with people beyond the duration of films. This idea of extending the boundaries of mental confusion not only applies to the direct portrayal of mental illness within Hitchcock’s films, but also to the treatment of surrealist sequences and motifs within Spellbound and Psycho. Like the treatment of mental illness, Erb notes that the use of surrealism in Spellbound is also completely contained to a single sequence. It begins and it ends and after the specific sequence has finished, surrealist dream sequences never again plague the afflicted John Ballantine. However, in Psycho, a later Hitchcock film, there is no contained surrealist sequence. Instead, several surrealist images sporadically appear throughout the film. Through his evolving treatment of both mental illness and surrealism, Hitchcock reflects the public’s shifting view that mental illness is not easily contained or cured.

Rabaté, Jean-Michel. " Loving Freud Madly: Surrealism between Hysterical and Paranoid Modernism." Journal of Modern Literature 25.3-4 (2002):58-74.

Rabaté examines the role of surrealism in the spread of Freudian ideas. The author approaches this topic by first looking at the historical context from which the discourse emerged. While other surrealists and Freudians had become friends and collaborators, Freud and Breton had a long history of animosity between them. Unable to become friendly because of constant bickering over who deserved credit for various ideas in art and psychology, the surrealist and Freudian fields were forced to keep their distance. Breton and his followers eventually embraced the idea of hysteria and exalted the idea of guided paranoia. However, in the wake of issues within the surrealist camp as well as the events occurring in society, the majority of surrealists eventually embraced the idea of “paranoid modernism.”  Rabaté concludes the article by arguing the by embracing the idea of modernism, the surrealists, who had at one time been the enemies of Freud, were able to both take on and in turn take over many of Freud’s ideas.

The idea that the surrealist dream sequence created by Dali, which is shown in Spellbound, could be understood perfectly well by the application of Freudian principles would have been completely absurd to both Freudians and surrealists. But interestingly enough, and perhaps because of the commercial takeover of the intellectual ideas of Freud and Surrealism, the surrealist sequence appears to make complete sense to the Freudians analyzing John Ballantine within the context of the film. By creating this peaceful co-existence of ideas within the film, Spellbound itself becomes a vehicle for the dissemination not only of independent surrealist and Freudian principles, but for the idea that both ideologies are able to co-exist and ultimately act as one ideology.

Brandell, Jerrold R. "Eighty Years of Dream Sequences: A Cinematic Journey Down Freud's "Royal Road." American Imago 61.1 (2004): 59-76.

Brandell’s article looks at Secrets of the Soul, Spellbound, David and Lisa, and 12 Monkeys and analyzes each film’s treatment of psychoanalysis specifically relating to the interpretation of dream sequences as an extension of the different times’ approaches and attitudes towards psychoanalysis. Brandell is specifically interested in looking at the possibility that specific cultural events or attitudes could have shaped the depiction of psychoanalytic treatment in film. In addition to attitudes, Brandell also explores whether advances in technology changed the way that filmmakers approached the representation of the psychoanalysis of dreams. After investigating the depictions of psychoanalysis in each film, Brandell comes to the conclusion that the representations of dream sequences have little to do with the technological capacity of the time in which each film was created. Instead, he argues that the each film was more influenced by historical events and that social attitudes, not technological innovations, dictated the depictions of dream sequences and psychoanalysis.

Ultimately, Brandell concludes that the portrayal of “Dr. Edwardes’ ” dream sequence is based less on the technological resources of Salvador Dali, and instead is shaped by what people’s position on psychiatry and psychoanalysis was at the time. Brandell argues that this position had been greatly affected by the influx of veterans with various forms of posttraumatic stress disorder returning home from World War II. Like John Ballantine, who witnessed the traumatic death of the real Dr. Edwardes, the depiction of his treatment argues that through psychoanalysis patients can work through their trauma and ultimately “open the doors” to their memories and the subconscious, allowing them to be cured. At the end of the film, John Ballantine escapes the memories that haunt him by successfully completing psychoanalysis with the help of Dr. Peterson. Perhaps the film intends to argue that like Ballantine, the generation of soldiers traumatized after a difficult war could also be “cured.” Spellbound’s representation of psychoanalysis is in many respects inaccurate, but is consistently hopeful.

Bradshaw, Peter and Andrew Gilchrist. "How to make a surrealist film: Grab a giant seashell, send for a rotting donkey, and don't forget to press your dinner jacket...Peter Bradshaw and Andrew Gilchrist offer 10 tips for any budding Bunuels." The Guardian (London), 5 March 2007,16. Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe, 9 April 2008. .

Bradshaw and Gilchrist offer “budding Bunuels” ten tips for perfecting surrealist films. Their article might approach the issue of surrealist filmmaking from a humorous perspective, but there are several legitimate points within the article. The authors argue that filmmakers should dress their characters in formalwear, repeat scenes, change scenes abruptly, let a seashell star in the film, slice open an eyeball, and sell tickets made of sandpaper to the premier of the film, just to name a few. While, the authors openly mock the ridiculousness of many surrealist traditions, each one of their tips is grounded in the past action of a surrealist star from Bunuel to Dali.

In addition to hiring a seashell and appearing in full scuba gear for your film’s premier, the authors argue that each surrealist film should include a dream sequence. They specifically single out the dream sequence in Spellbound, which was created by Dali. While the article, by mentioning the film by name seems to imply its superiority, or at least superior notoriety, when compared to other surrealist films, the inclusion of Spellbound in this top ten list of surrealist tips emphasizes the lack of opportunity for originality that plagued Dali and other surrealist filmmakers who worked within the Hollywood system. In Spellbound, Dali was used for his name recognition rather than his vision as a surrealist thinker. Instead of allowing Dali artistic freedom to create the alternate world that he had imagined, the producers of Spellbound changed Dali’s vision and subsequently demeaned his contribution to the film. Instead of allowing him artistic control, Spellbound used Dali’s name as a vehicle for publicity and conformed his vision to the restrictions of a surrealist greatest hits list.