Anthony Edwardes, if we can call
him that, makes a perfect case study for the repressed individual. During an otherwise delightful dinner with
his new colleagues, he squirms when Dr. Constance Peterson traces the shape of
Green Manor’s yet-to-be-built swimming pool on the tablecloth with her
fork.
The same parallel-line pattern
shocks him once again when he notices it on Constance’s robe after their first
kiss, which, not coincidentally, coincides with the image of three doors opening;
though their relationship is not exactly doctor-patient at this point,
Constance unwittingly performs the duty of the psychoanalyst stated at the
beginning of the film: “to open the locked doors of his [the patient’s]
mind.” Constance soon discovers the Anthony
Edwardes she has known for only a short time is not actually Anthony Edwardes; when he remembers he is not Edwardes, the impostor can only come up with the
initials of his real name: J.B.
Constance and J.B.’s adventures over the course of the story become an
exercise in uncovering hidden memories.
J.B.’s episodes, his
“manifestations of insanity” (828), are uncanny because they “lead back to what
is known of old and long familiar” (825), even if the familiar and its
accompanying meaning is veiled.
The aforementioned stripes surrounded by white elicit a
similar response from him each time, an “involuntary repetition” (833) of
anxiety. Neither Constance nor J.B. can
identify the root of this uncanny trigger, not until she takes him to her
mentor, Dr. Brulov. It is during their
stay, as fugitives, at Dr. Brulov’s house that J.B.’s repressed memories
finally come to light. It is also during
their stay at Dr. Brulov’s house that the viewer witnesses the uncanniest
scenes in Spellbound: J.B.’s mental
break, brought on by the stark whiteness of the bathroom fixtures and the lines
of the comforter, and the retelling of his dream, presented in surrealistic
fashion, thanks to its design by Salvador Dali.
Both of these scenes speak to the importance of the artistic choices in
producing the uncanny, which Hitchcock does successfully in his use of point of
view.
Freud recognizes instances in which
his hypothesis of the uncanny is contradicted, especially in “the realm of
fiction, of imaginative writing” (837).
A severed hand most certainly seems an uncanny effect, as long as it can
be traced to the castration complex, a universally repressed fear in
Freud’s opinion. He readily, acknowledges,
though, that just as many stories with severed hands are not uncanny. Such discrepancy “suggests that we should
differentiate between the uncanny that we actually experience and the uncanny
that we merely picture or read about” (837).
Spellbound is, obviously, a
work of fiction, but it aims to tell a story that deals directly with
psychology, a story set in the real world.
Most importantly, its goal is to present an uncanny that the viewer
experiences, as evidenced by the scene in which J.B. carries his razor blade
downstairs and into Dr. Brulov’s living room, presumably to do damage to whomever he encounters.
The camera alternates between third
and first person, the former implicating the viewer in the crime that is sure
to take place, the latter putting the viewer in the madman’s shoes. J.B., and by extension, the viewer, watches
on in silence as Dr. Brulov calmly deals with the situation by offering, and
later retrieving, crackers and milk. The
quick cuts to J.B.’s hand, holding the razor blade, externalize his thoughts to
the viewer; the various triggers in the upstairs bedroom and bathroom have
induced a certain monomania in him. They
remind him of a time when he killed, and he is about to kill again. Luckily, Dr. Brulov gives him a bromide-laced
glass of milk, which has an immediate effect.
Woken up and back to his senses,
J.B. recounts in detail his dream from the previous night. The imagery in the dream, if not uncanny, is
truly unsettling. The viewer sees walls
full of eyes, a scantily-clad woman, a “proprietor” whose face is covered with
a hole-less linen sack, and a man with skis falling off the ledge of a house,
among other things. While the viewer
might take the dream sequence for granted, it functions as a type of dramatic irony,
albeit in a limited way, for only one person in the film truly knows what this
dream looks like: J.B. Partly because
J.B. does not do justice in his telling of the dream, the viewer knows a few things Constance
and Dr. Brulov cannot know: the realness of the “painted” eyes, the horror of
the proprietor’s appearance, the absurd size of the playing cards, the
distorted shape of the wheel, etc.
The
explanation of Dr. Anthony Edwardes’ disappearance and death does not occur
until the end of the film, leaving the viewer hanging with regard to J.B.’s
guilt/innocence. Freud alludes to this practice, which he claims improves
a writer’s chance of success at instilling the uncanny: “[the writer] can keep
us in the dark for a long time about the precise nature of the presupposition
on which the world he writes about is based, or he can cunningly and
ingeniously avoid any definite information on the point to the last”
(840). Granted, most mysteries do not give away their secrets until the
end, but the uncertainty with which we are faced as we see things through
J.B.’s eyes hints at the implications of a living a life full of repressed
memories, an uncanny life.
How does a man perceive himself when traumatic memories are hidden, and
only an inkling of what has happened, be it good or bad, remains? Mr.
Garmes, much like J.B. later, believes he literally killed his father.
Constance reassures him that he did not, that he is only projecting guilt for
something else. Whether he killed his father or not, Garmes believes he
did, which leads him to violently act out at Green Manor. He tries to
kill Dr. Fleurot and then cuts his own throat. Though the attack happens
off-screen, it nearly reenacts itself in Dr. Brulov’s house when J.B.,
razor in hand, approaches the doctor. J.B., after all, has already
admitted his crime against Edwardes to Constance: “I remember now.
Edwardes is dead. I killed him and took his place.” That he errs in
uncovering his repressed memories almost leads him to commit the type of crime
of which he considers himself guilty. As viewers, our closeness to J.B.,
facilitated by our ability to see through his eyes at times, leaves us in a
state of suspended disbelief; did he kill Edwardes, or did he not?
What we cannot deny is the complexity of the psyche, The Labyrinth of the
Guilt Complex; what is more terrifying than misremembering the past,
ascribing to oneself horrible crimes that were not committed?
No comments:
Post a Comment