How we cite our quotes: All quotations are from Spellbound.
Quote #4
CONSTANCE: Your guilt fantasies were obviously inflamed by your duties as a soldier.
Constance's comment here suggests that Ballantyne didn't like to kill because of something wrong in his childhood. In other words, most people should not, or do not, feel guilty for killing in war. At the same time, the film raises the possibility that a man who kills in wartime could be affected, and pained, by his own actions. The themes aren't quite confronted directly, but they seem like things that would be in a lot of people's minds when Spellbound came out just a few months after the end of World War II.
Quote #5
BALLANTYNE: I didn't kill my brother. It was an accident. It was an accident!
CONSTANCE: That's what's haunted you all your life. That was the memory you were afraid of.
This seems too easy, doesn't it? Ballantyne remembers he accidentally killed his brother, and it's been tormenting him all his life, but suddenly he realizes it wasn't his fault, and he's all happy and free? He even shouts happily about it.
Not that we want him to be sad, but surely he'd still be a little distressed? Oh well; maybe Hitchcock was just sick of him moping around all the time.