spellbound

“Citizen Nation” vibrates with the same earnest energy that made 2002’s spelling bee documentary “Spellbound” so memorable, although where that documentary uses its competitors’ stories to test whether hard work and self-assuredness are surefire keys to success, this series doesn’t bother with such fantasy.

In Alfred Hitchcock’s 1945 film Spellbound, Ingrid Bergman plays a psychiatrist who has fallen in love with her patient, an amnesiac accused of murder.

That the season’s two relatively original musicals — “Emilia Pérez,” the gender-transitioning Mexican crime title that won Cannes’ jury prize and actress awards earlier this year, and “Spellbound,” an animated fantasy with an all-star cast and songs by “Tangled” duo Alan Menken and Glenn Slater — are premiering on Netflix makes a certain sense.

Blitz, who broke into the business with his Oscar-nominated 2002 documentary “Spellbound,” talks to The Times about the rules for directing a scripted comedy to look like a serious documentary, the art of cat stunts and comedian Cloris Leachman’s commitment to her craft.

Within a couple of minutes, it snakes all the way back to the entrance, populated by doting parents and spellbound preteens hoping they arrived in time.