The Responsive Eye:
A Brian De Palma Retrospective
OBSESSION
Screened May 19, 2001
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Program
Notes
OBSESSION
Columbia, 1976. 98 mins.
Review in Variety, July 7, 1976:
OBSESSION is an excellent romantic
and non-violent suspense drama starring Cliff Robertson and Genevieve
Bujold. Brian De Palma's film, which may evoke memories of Alfred Hitchcock's
VERTIGO, is a handsome George Litto production shot in Italy and New Orleans.
Bernard Herrmann's excellent score complements Vilmos Zsigmond's meticulous
and delicate cinematography. The Columbia release is class picture-making
which has appeal to the suspense audience, and its restrained tearjerker
pull on women will not turn off men.
Paul
Schrader's script, from his and De Palma's story, is a complex
but comprehensible mix of treachery, torment and selfishness. Robertson
is haunted with guilt for the death of wife Bujold and child Wanda Blackman,
both kidnapped in 1959; he let the police convince him to send blank paper
in a ransom bag. Sixteen years later, on a trip abroad, he sees a lookalike
to Bujold, and gets swept away with this new girl. John Lithgow, very
good in featured role as Robertson's business partner, is not happy with
these events.
The
story keeps daring an audience to suppose that the girl is
Robertson's grown-up daughter, while he himself pursues her as a reincarnation
of his late wife. Bujold, in an excellent performance, also gets caught
up in the obsession. Another kidnapping turns the three principals inside
out several times before settling into definitive resolution of the mystery.
The three main characters are not at all what they seem.
Robertson's low-key performance is
as crucial to the manifold surprise impact as Bujold's versatile, sensual
and effervescent charisma; Lithgow's periodic inputs are no less intriguing.
The 98 minute film starts off with a sombre and steady movement, later
accelerates into a dizzying pace as new revelations pile upon each other.
Herrmann's music, beautifully recorded in London, is among his last and
his best as well; it would make blank film compelling. All production
credits are tops.
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