Published via Ecency

(source:tmdb.org)

As the career of Alfred Hitchcock was approaching its end, many critics and film scholars began to ask who would become the next Hitchcock. One of the first film-makers who dared to answer this question was Brian De Palma in his 1976 film Obsession.

The plot begins in 1959 New Orleans where wealthy and successful businessman Michael Courtland (played by Cliff Robertson) celebrates the 10th anniversary of his marriage to his beautiful wife Elizabeth (played by Geneviève Bujold). Soon afterwards, Elizabeth and her young daughter Amy are kidnapped, only to later perish in a botched police rescue attempt. Sixteen years pass and Michael is still burdened with feelings of loss and guilt. One day, his friend and business partner Robert LaSalle (played by John Lithgow) brings him on a trip to Italy and both men visit Florence, including the church where Michael originally met his wife. There he meets Sandra Portinari (also played by Bujold), a young Italian art restoration worker who has an uncanny resemblance to Elizabeth. He is immediately smitten by her beauty and, desperate for a chance to bring happiness back into his life, he starts courting her. She agrees to follow him to New Orleans where they would marry, but things aren’t what they seem to be and history might repeat itself.

In this film, De Palma demonstrated skills that would later help him build and maintain the reputation of Hollywood’s most stylish director. Obsession, although produced with a relatively low budget, looks and sounds like a grand film like those Hollywood used to make in its golden age. This is in great part due to the great work and attention to detail from cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, who puts the locations of New Orleans and Florence to good use and whose soft-lens focus helps with the passage of time and creates a dreamlike, romantic atmosphere. Even more impressive is the musical score by Bernard Herrmann, one of the greatest film composers of all time, also known for his memorable work on Hitchcock’s films. Obsession was his penultimate film and his score is one of his best, in many ways inspired by the composer’s infatuation with Bujold, who later said that Herrmann “made love to her with his music”.

Obsession looks and sounds very good, but it can’t overcome one major problem. Both De Palma and his screenwriter Paul Schrader went on record that they were inspired by Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Whether they wanted to compete with the film later proclaimed by the prestigious Sight & Sound poll as the greatest in the history of cinema, or whether they simply wanted to pay homage to Hitchcock, the inevitable comparisons between the two films aren’t favourable to the latter one. Cliff Robertson, although convincing in the role of a troubled protagonist, simply can’t hold a candle to James Stewart as the neurotic protagonist of Hitchcock’s film. The script, which was, much to Schrader’s displeasure, changed during production, is burdened with a few plot holes and the major twist near the end isn’t that surprising; some elements of the plot are deliberately made ambiguous and confusing due to censorship considerations. Despite that, Obsession was a success, paving the way for the triumphant continuation of De Palma’s career and his reign as the most Hitchcockian of all Hollywood directors of his generation. The audience who watches this film, especially those viewers who haven’t seen Vertigo, won’t be that bothered by this piece of film-making which gives more emphasis to style over substance.

RATING: 7/10 (++)