Light into Darkness: the Gothic Roots of Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945)

This essay stems from the hypothesis that contact zones between genres or modes and media enable us to analyse those exchanges that revitalise established forms and conventions. Coherently with this remit, it will explore the Gothic dimension of Alfred Hitchcock’s psychological thrillers, with a focus on Spellbound (1945). The film will be discussed in relation both to the rather obscure novel in which it is rooted and to the wide range of ‘psychological melodramas’ that Hollywood produced in the 1940s. While the metamorphosis of the Gothic into the psychological thriller partly resulted in a ‘sanitation’ of Gothic transgressiveness, it also concurred to its refunctionalisation within the conceptual framework of psychoanalysis, ultimately proving its resilience.