Spellbound Scene 17 Summary

  • … but conveniently, our heroes already left Brulov's and are on a train eating together.
  • Constance seems to have infinite amounts of money. She must make a good salary as a psychologist.
  • Anyway, she's chattering away about how she's going to buy feminine clothes from now on. When he's cured she'll be a good, frilly wife, which is a Hollywood vision of a happy ending, apparently.
  • JB looks skeptical too, or maybe just freaked out.
  • He seems terrified of her knife cutting… though why exactly is unclear.
  • Anyway, cut to them on a ski slope, hiking to the top of a hill.
  • JB looks half out of it. Constance tells him to put on his skis, and he does.
  • They start down the hill. They don't really look dressed for winter, but that's okay, because they're clearly on a soundstage, not a real winter hill.
  • The downhill run couldn't appear more fake. There were limits to special effects in 1945.
  • JB looks like a psychotic killer as he skis down, and Constance looks nervous.
  • The soundtrack is very excitable.
  • And they're skiing toward a cliff.
  • Then there's a voiceover, with JB saying he suddenly remembers that he killed his brother.
  • There's a brief flashback of young JB sliding down a roof, kicking his brother off the end of it, and his brother getting impaled on a fence.
  • It's kind of a doofy flashback; again, it doesn't exactly look real, so it ends up seeming almost comical. "Hah, hah, look at the little boy dying" probably wasn't exactly the effect Hitchcock was going for. That's the way it goes, sometimes, though.
  • But no matter. Back in the present, JB grabs Constance and pulls her down so they don't go over the cliff.
  • He shouts happily that he didn't kill his brother, it was an accident. Oh happy day.