Uploaded December 2020 | Updated September 2026, 6 hours ago
(Alfred Hitchcock, US 1945, 111 min.)
Originally scheduled as a film series for this fall at The Dryden, we look 75 years into the past at the Academy Award nominees for Best Picture of 1945. A diverse group of films that highlight the breadth of technique and genre taking place at the height of the Hollywood system.
Hitchcock’s first Best Picture nominee since Suspicion in 1941 delves deep into the psyche with this story of psychologists and repressed memory. Gregory Peck is Dr. Anthony Edwardes, the newly arrived head of Green Manors mental hospital. The staff is surprised at his young age, and Dr. Constance Peterson (Ingrid Bergman) becomes particularly suspicious of him, despite her attraction. When Edwardes’s behavior becomes erratic and a murder is uncovered, Peterson must help him recover his memory to save his life, taking him to the Rochester home of her mentor, Dr. Alex Brulov (Michael Chekhov). Hitchcock convinced producer David O. Selznick to hire Salvador Dalí to design the dream sequence that is the key to the mystery, breaking with conventions of cinematic dreams as blurred and hazy and resulting in one of the most memorable sequences of Hitchcock’s career.
This video has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: NEH CARES.
Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this video, do not necessarily represent those of the NEH.
(Alfred Hitchcock, US 1945, 111 min.)
Originally scheduled as a film series for this fall at The Dryden, we look 75 years into the past at the Academy Award nominees for Best Picture of 1945. A diverse group of films that highlight the breadth of technique and genre taking place at the height of the Hollywood system.
Hitchcock’s first Best Picture nominee since Suspicion in 1941 delves deep into the psyche with this story of psychologists and repressed memory. Gregory Peck is Dr. Anthony Edwardes, the newly arrived head of Green Manors mental hospital. The staff is surprised at his young age, and Dr. Constance Peterson (Ingrid Bergman) becomes particularly suspicious of him, despite her attraction. When Edwardes’s behavior becomes erratic and a murder is uncovered, Peterson must help him recover his memory to save his life, taking him to the Rochester home of her mentor, Dr. Alex Brulov (Michael Chekhov). Hitchcock convinced producer David O. Selznick to hire Salvador Dalí to design the dream sequence that is the key to the mystery, breaking with conventions of cinematic dreams as blurred and hazy and resulting in one of the most memorable sequences of Hitchcock’s career.
This video has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: NEH CARES.
Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this video, do not necessarily represent those of the NEH.
