DVD details for
Spellbound (1945) More at IMDbPro »

Bonus Features: Disc 1: The Lifeboat Disc 2: Young and Innocent **Commentary with film historians Stephen Rebello and Bill Krohn **Isolated Music and Effects Track **Peter Bogdanovich Interviews Hitchcock **Francois Truffant Interviews Hitchcock **Restoration Comparison **Trailers **Still Galleries Disc 3: The Lodger **Commentary with film Historian Patrick McGilligan **Featurette The Sound of Silence: The making of The Lodger, Hitchcock 101 **1940 Radio Play Directed by Alfred Hitchcock **Peter Bogdanovich Interviews Hitchcock **Francois Truffaut Interviews Hitchcock **Restoration Comparison **Trailers **Still Gallery Disc 4: Notorious Disc 5: Rebecca CE Disc 6: Sabatoge **Commentary with film Historian Leonard Leff **Peter Bogdanovich Interviews Hitchcock **Restoration Comparison **Still Gallery **Trailer Farm Disc 7: Spellbound Disc 8: The Paradine Case **Commentary with film Historians Stephen Rebello and Bill Krohn **Isolated Music and Effects Track **1949 Radio Play starring Joseph Cotton **Peter Bogdanovich Interviews Hitchcock **Restoration Comparison **Theatrical Trailer **Still Gallery **Trailer Farm Episode Description: Disc 1: The Lifeboat Disc 2: Young and Innocent Disc 3: The Lodger Disc 4: Notorious Disc 5: Rebecca CE Disc 6: Sabatoge Disc 7: Spellbound Disc 8: The Paradine Case

Michel Hafner (25 January 2000):
This DVD edition of 'Alfred Hitchcock' 's classic Spellbound (1945) by Anchor Bay is of pretty good quality in most areas.
The film master used is in nice shape, especially for a film of this age. There are speckles and the like in many scenes, some frames are missing, but it's not bad. Image steadiness is satisfying as well.
Contrast rendition is good. Shadow detail is sometimes a bit lacking, the blacks are not that deep, but I have seen far worse from films shot several decades later.
Definitely worth improving is image sharpness though which is mediocre.
The noise and grain level is mostly low. I suspect that digital noise suppression has been applied. Textures in motion lose too much detail and look somewhat unnatural. But this effect is also due to compression artifacts.
The average bit rate around 5 Mbit/s is too low for first class results. Artifacts are visible throughout (blocking, freezing image parts, compression noise). Image parts are sometimes moved around (such as the back wall in chapter 2 at 6:50...) (could also be a noise suppression effect). There are no overenhanced edges and hardly any aliasing on the other hand.
This DVD is pretty watchable. The worst aspect are lack of sharpness and compression problems due to use of the single layer format. I wish Anchor Bay had not been so 'cheap' and had gone double layer, but they didn't. I hope this is not the last DVD version of "Spellbound" we'll see, but until a better version comes out it's an acceptable proxy.