SPELLBOUND is probably my favourite Alfred Hitchcock film (at worst it is tied with REAR WINDOW, which will always be special to me for making me love the cinema). Michael Chekhov's performance as Dr Brulov gives us the funniest character in Hitchcock's oeuvre, Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman give us the most romantic tortured relationship this side of VERTIGO, Miklós Rózsa's score surpasses the finest work of Herrmann, and George Barnes's photography challenges anything Bernard Knowles brought to Hitchcock's most…

One of the most heartbreaking of all Hollywood melodramas, and probably Sirk's most sincere and overtly emotional film. Perfect in cinematic form - like all of the Sirk/Metty films - and stunningly woven, the hollow (but wildly entertaining) story of Lana Turner's climb to the top of the entertainment industy foregrounds much of the film while the more interesting, passionately emotional tension simmers in the background. Fated from birth and sealed by death, the destruction of a mother-daughter bond by…