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Obsession [1976]
![Obsession [1976]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51K4MY28PCL._SL160_.jpg)
RRP: £12.99
Our Price: £5.08 (subject to change)
Deja vu
Review date: 2007-12-15 Rating: 6 out of 10
Cliff Robertson's Obsession is for Genevieve Bujold's exact double of his kidnapped and murdered wife of twenty years earlier, but the title could just as easily stand for director Brian De Palma's over-fondness for Hitchcock and Paul Schrader's penchant for remaking The Searchers (complete with "Will he kill her/Will he kiss her?" ending). It's great fun as long as you haven't seen Vertigo - and when this was released in 1976, Hitchcock's masterpiece had been out of distribution for nearly two decades - but the similarities in both style and content become very apparent of you have. At one point they were even more pronounced with an unfilmed `fourth act' that saw Robertson descending further into further madness.
Nonetheless, the director's visual flourishes and audacious love of the purely cinematic in his camera movements, all the more sumptuous in this 2.35:1 widescreen DVD transfer, and Bernard Herrmann's brilliant penultimate score, with its magnificent final waltz theme, carry you along despite the air of familiarity. Anchor Bay's original release includes a featurette on the film and the original trailer.
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Reviews
PALI (-N) MPS( -C) EST
Review date: 2002-12-06 Rating: 10 out of 10
Based on a very smart screenplay directly written for the screen by Paul Schrader and Brian De Palma, OBSESSION is, in my opinion, the masterpiece of the director of MISSION IMPOSSIBLE. The movie can be read at several different levels but is primarily an excellent thriller treating of the guiltiness felt by a man who failed to rescue his wife and his daughter when kidnapped in New Orleans.
The key of OBSESSION lies in the scene of the first encounter between Courtland and Sandra, in the medieval church in which the hero married his first wife. Sandra is trying to restore old paintings that happen to have been themselves painted over older paintings. Asked by Courtland if the new paintings will be erased, Sandra answers that it's not useful to destroy them in order to bring into light the original ones.
So OBSESSION is clearly an homage to Alfred Hitchcock's VERTIGO but is also a movie of its own who deserves credit. I remember that the sumptuous travellings of De Palma's camera were, in the seventies, rather unusual in the american production and generated numerous critics. One can only observe, 25 years later, that De Palma new aesthetics has inspired a whole generation of american filmmakers, like Steven Spielberg for instance, who has understood that a camera movement could produce emotions in the viewer's heart.
A DVD zone your library.
Product Details/Specifications
Actor(s):
Wanda Blackman
Sylvia Kuumba Williams
Geneviève Bujold
Cliff Robertson
John Lithgow
Creators:
Cliff Robertson (Primary Contributor)
Geneviève Bujold (Primary Contributor)
Director(s):
Recording label: Starz Home Entertainment
Manufacturer: Starz Home Entertainment
EAN: 5060020620638
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 1
Format: PAL,
Release date: 2002-05-27
Number of discs: 1
Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
Audience rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
Region code: 2
Running time: 94 minutes
Theatrical release date: 1975
Language: English (Original Language)