when they are getting on the train, the engineer is taking their ticket and then they all make funny faces. It was a reference to the earlier scene with the same engineer, but i didnt undertand either exchange.
Anyone know?
I'm not sure but maybe because their kiss looked like a goodbye kiss or something and then they both get on the train.
shareAs a guess I'd say it was because it was unusual for a man and woman to kiss in public back then. Except for occasions like saying goodbye, as mentioned in the previous reply. Peck says something like "everyone's doing it" which supports this theory.
shareEveryone around them was kissing their other half off, saying goodbye. But Petersen (Bergmann) and John (Peck) kissed then handed the ticket guy 2 tickets, meaning they were both going and therefore didn't need to kiss eachother to say goodbye as they were both going!
You got the first part right but you haven't nailed the 2nd scene (at the end). Don't forget the doctor is with them and what he says to them.
-Rayovac
Yes, the doctor says, "Any husband of Constance is a husband of mine, so to speak." So there was perhaps a sort of weird sexual inference (gay/bisexual/menage a trois). That's when the conductor first has the strange look on his face.
shareI think it was Hitchcock's sly reference to the eye thing in Peck's dream. Remember he envisioned huge eyes on the curtains and was terrified of people looking at him. Notice he is startled by the conducter's big staring eyes.
shareJust watched it again after many years. ( My old copy of 'Time Out Film
Review' gave it a poor rating in 1998! We have a different perspective now.) agree with most of all the above, certainly the kiss goodbye idea is the most obvious reading, you can find supressed sexual desire in most things and would have to be spelled out more purposefully if they were intended. It is a device , motif, call it what you will, often used in the movies , of the comical look , usually from a minor character who has been passively looking on head cocked at an angle. The End and titles roll .
pt100 and tday-1: The man taking tickets at the gate to the train platform was a gateman, not a conductor. (Note the label to that effect on the front of his cap.) The conductor and his assistants (today called "assistant conductors", back then typically called "trainmen" or "brakemen") would at that point have been in the train cars, getting ready for the trip. Somewhat similar to the way in which, when you board a plane, the people who take your boarding pass are gate agents, not flight attendants.
It is true that there were and are many American train stations, mostly small- or medium-sized ones, where it was and/or is the practice for the conductor and certain other onboard crew members to stand outside the train, or even stand at a small desk in the station near the boarding gate, and inspect the tickets of boarding passengers. At a number of really large stations, though, it was and/or is the practice for that function to be performed by a separate class of employees.
tovenusandback: The man taking tickets at the gate to the train platform was a gateman, not an engineer. (Note the label to that effect on the front of his cap.) The engineer would be up at the front of the train in the locomotive, getting ready for the trip. Similar to the way in which, when you board a plane, the people who take your boarding pass are gate agents, not pilots.
Incidentally, at the time Spellbound was made, a terminological distinction was typically made between locomotives, which are self-contained (i.e., carrying their own energy in the form of coal, oil, wood, or other fuel), and "motors" or electric engines, which get their power externally from an electrified third rail or from overhead wires. A matching terminological distinction was typically made between engineers, who operated locomotives, and "motormen", who operated the aforementioned "motors". Since all trains departing from and arriving at the 1913 version of Grand Central Terminal (the one still operating today) were and still are moved by external electric power in one way or another, it follows that the operator of the engine of the trains John and Constance departed on would have been called a motorman. But again, the man letting them through the gates was a gateman.