Obsession *** (1976, Cliff Robertson, Geneviève Bujold, John Lithgow) – Classic Movie Review 2188

For director Brian De Palma’s teasing and intriguing 1976 mystery thriller, writer Paul Schrader bases his screenplay on the movie buff’s story he concocted with De Palma.

Schrader and De Palma no doubt intend an homage to Alfred Hitchcock but they are ruthlessly raiding Hitchcock’s Vertigo for this tale of a well-off father, a New Orleans businessman called Michael Courtland (Cliff Robertson), whose wife Elizabeth and daughter are kidnapped and killed in a botched kidnap rescue attempt.

Many years later, Courtland visits Italy and meets and falls in in love with the spitting image of his dead wife, a woman calling herself Sandra Portinari (Geneviève Bujold).

Director De Palma films with much style and brio, and everything goes grippingly well until the unfortunately botched ending, which leaves you irritated and exhausted.

In a good, hard-working cast, Bujold is particularly effective, oozing bubbly sexuality, though perhaps De Palma’s canniest decision is to use Hitchcock’s regular composer Bernard Herrmann, who comes up with a memorable Oscar-nominated score. His cleverest other decision is to hire Vilmos Zsigmond, who provides the eye-catching cinematography.

Obsession also stars John Lithgow, and in the cast too are Sylvia Williams, Wanda Blackman, Patrick McNamara, Stanley J Reyes, Nick Krieger, Stocker Fontelieu, Don Hood, Andrea Esterhazy and Thomas Carr.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2188

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