The best exploitation of the pleasures of amnesia occurred in Hitchcock’s Spellbound where Gregory Peck had amnesia and Ingrid Bergman was his psychiatrist. For the moviegoer there occurred first the pleasure of the prospect of a new life and the infinite possibilities the self as represented by Gregory Peck. The second pleasure is the accidental meeting with Ingrid Bergman, who is sensitive to the clues that Gregory misses, and who is a reliable guide, his Beatrice, who can help him recover his old life — for even amnesia, if prolonged, can become as dreary as one’s old life.
— Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos, (1) The Amnesic Self: Why the Self Wants to Get Rid of Itself
Spellbound Dream Sequence
April 30, 2007 by at 6:01 pm
rgI was always dumbfounded that every soap opera used amnesia as a plot device. That and the mistaken twin.
This was partly why I quit watching them. As a storyteller I couldn’t stand the mack truck sized plot holes that viewers were supposed to just accept.
Personally, while there are things I would just as soon forget in my past I can’t imagine having to walk away from the people.
On a side note: Like Percy, I am skeptical that Bergman’s character could have deduced that Peck’s character was a Dr. from the flimsy answer to only one question. The first time I saw the movie I remember saying “Yeah Right!” when she makes her deduction.
From the files of useless trivia I have stored away from my misspent youth –
I beleive the set designer for the dream seqence of the film Spelbound was Savadore Dali.
Salvadore Dali sorry for the Typo.