A few nights ago, I fired up Brian De Palma’s 1976 thriller “Obsession” on the old Amazon Prime. At the opening shot, I was struck by a thought.
“I’ve seen this before.”
And I had. Or at least I think so. At various points, an ethereal sense of déjà vu percolated, as did suspicions as to what was coming, but they were never solid enough to make the film boring.
“Obsession” is one of De Palma’s more sedate projects; in between the action are long stretches of simmering mystery. Cliff Robertson plays Micheal, a man whose wife and daughter are killed in a botched kidnapping. Years later, on a trip to Florence, he sees Sandra, a young woman who looks much like his wife. (De Palma loved Hitchcock, and this plot device is right out of the middle act of “Vertigo”) A slow motion romance blooms, but betrayal and death are inevitably around the corner.
I presume Robertson made deliberate choices as to how he played Michael, a man who says little and spends much of his screen time staring at people, or taking forever to answer questions. But I find this pretty clunky, and it made it hard to understand why Sandra would find him charming. (This question is answered by the end though.)
John Lithgow is also present, much of the time wearing an unconvincing fake mustache.
I like the taboo-breaking aspect of the plot (taboo-breaking is De Palma’s wheelhouse), but other elements feels rather forced. Many things happen because the plot needs them to. At one point, a character pulls out a gun before a fight, only to immediately drop it. It only comes into use in a later scene and the viewer realizes that’s why it was introduced to begin with. Too convenient in my book. (The final scene, when a character takes the gun to an airport, will remind you just how lax airport security used to be.)
The score is done by Hitchcock’s go-to man and my favorite film composer, Bernard Herrmann. It’s deliciously creepy, as Herrmann’s work always was.
If you’re in the mood for something weird, and something distinctly 1970s, I recommend this.
