Angus MacPhail and Ben Hecht

Yeah. We know. That dude's last name is "MacPhail," which makes him sound as if he should make his living starring in Vines that involve falling off hover boards and jumping into empty swimming pools.

But instead, he was a screenwriter… and one of Hitchcock's main scribes, as was Ben Hecht. But critics agree that Spellbound ain't his or Mr. Hecht's most coherent work.

The film is filled with coincidences, unlikely events, and more unlikely events. The explanation at the end feels like the writers desperately are trying to explain what on earth happened before they run out of time. So… um, yeah—the evil boss did it. Okay could someone fade to black now? Anyone? Please? Help!?

If the script feels stitched together, that's probably because it was. The movie is based originally on the novel The House of Dr. Edwardes, by Francis Beeding—a pseudonym for authors John Palmer and Hilary A. Saunders. The novel is about an impostor in an asylum who's uncovered by a female analyst. There's no amnesia, no murder mystery, and no Salvador Dali dream sequence.

Also, the book sort of makes sense.

Hitchcock and producer David O. Selznik brought in Hitchcock's longtime collaborator, Angus MacPhail, to rework the novel. He threw in amnesia and the love affair between Constance and Edwardes/Ballantyne. Now the film was approaching the needed heights of Hollywood nuttiness—but it still wasn't quite there yet.

So producer Selznik brought in veteran screenwriter Ben Hecht, who had written famous pictures like Scarface (1932) and Angels Over Broadway (1940). Spellbound was Hecht's first of several collaborations with Hitchcock.

He didn't exactly make the story intelligible, but he added a lot of nifty details, including the business with Ballantyne standing over Constance with a straight razor. That was the sort of creepy thing Hitchcock liked. Hecht also added the whole murder mystery, at Selznik's insistence.

Hitchcock and Selznik both had a lot of input into the script, too. Spellbound isn't a single vision, and doesn't feel like it is. Instead, it's a cobbled together jumble of bits and pieces—appropriate for a story about a dude who doesn't quite know who he is.