Obsession (film)
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| Obsession | |
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| Directed by | Brian De Palma |
| Produced by | George Litto |
| Written by | Paul Schrader |
| Starring | Cliff Robertson Geneviève Bujold John Lithgow |
| Music by | Bernard Herrmann |
| Cinematography | Vilmos Zsigmond |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
| Release date(s) | 1 August 1976 (NYC premiere) |
| Running time | 98 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $1.4 million (estimate) |
Obsession is a 1976 psychological thriller/mystery directed by Brian De Palma, starring Cliff Robertson, Geneviève Bujold, and John Lithgow. The screenplay was by Paul Schrader, from a story by De Palma and Schrader. Bernard Herrmann provided the film's powerful music.
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[edit] Plot
In 1959, Michael Courtland (Robertson), a New Orleans real estate developer, has his life shattered when his wife Elizabeth (Bujold) and young daughter Amy are kidnapped. The police strongly recommend that he provide the kidnappers with shredded blank paper instead of the demanded ransom, and he agrees to the plan. This leads to a bungled car chase in which both kidnappers and victims are killed in a spectacular explosion. Courtland blames himself for the deaths of his wife and daughter.
Fifteen years pass. Courtland is morbidly obsessed with his dead wife, and regularly visits a monument he has had erected in her memory. The monument is a replica of the church where he and Elizabeth had met many years before in Florence, Italy. His real estate partner Robert LaSalle (Lithgow) convinces Courtland to tag along on a business trip back to Florence. While there, Courtland revisits the church, and suddenly comes face to face with a young woman named Sandra (Bujold) who looks exactly like his late wife. The already slightly unhinged Courtland begins to court the young woman, and subtly attempts to transform her into a perfect mirror image of his dead wife.
Courtland and Sandra eventually marry. On their wedding night, Sandra is kidnapped and a ransom note is left behind by her abductors. It is an exact replica of the kidnappers' message from fifteen years before. This time, Courtland decides to deliver the demanded cash. He withdraws massive quantities of money from his accounts and business holdings, financially ruining him and forcing him to sign over his interest in the real estate business to LaSalle. In the process, he discovers that his entire ordeal, including the original kidnapping, had been engineered by LaSalle as a way to gain sole control of Courtland's company share holdings. The now nearly insane Courtland stabs LaSalle to death.
Knowing that Sandra must have been a willing accomplice in the plot against him, he goes to the airport to kill the escaping woman. On the plane, Sandra has a flashback to her part in the scheme; she is in fact Courtland's daughter, allowed by LaSalle to survive the explosive traffic "accident" from years before that had killed her mother. LaSalle had told her lies about Courtland over the years, convincing her that her father had not paid the ransom because he didn't love her. Sandra, who now loves Courtland, attempts suicide on the plane and is taken off the flight in a wheelchair. Courtland sees her and runs toward her, gun drawn. A security guard attempts to stop him but Courtland smashes the briefcase full of money against the guard's head, knocking him unconcious. The briefcase breaks open and all of the money flies out. Sandra, seeing the fluttering bills, stands up and shouts: "Daddy! You brought the money!" Courtland now realizes for the first time who Sandra really is, and father and daughter fall into a deep embrace.
[edit] Production
De Palma and Schrader devised a story with a narrative clearly inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, a film that both of them loved. Schrader's original screenplay, titled Deja Vu, was reportedly much longer than the final film, with a coda that extended another ten years past where the film now ends. De Palma ultimately found Schrader's screenplay unfilmable due to its length, and rewrote and condensed the finale himself after Schrader refused to make the requested changes. The film's composer, Bernard Herrmann, agreed with the decision to excise the original ending, telling De Palma, after reading Schrader's version, "Get rid of it--that'll never work". Schrader remained resentful of De Palma's rewrite for years, and claimed to have lost all interest in the project once the change was made.
After the film was completed, Columbia executives expressed unease over the incest theme, especially as it was portrayed in such a heavily romanticized manner. Consequently, a few minor changes were made to a pivotal sequence between Robertson and Bujold, in which dissolves and visual "ripples" were inserted in order to suggest that the consummation of their marriage was in fact simply a dream.
[edit] Response
Critical reaction to Obsession was mixed. Reviewers routinely praised the stylish cinematography by Vilmos Zsigmond, and Bernard Herrmann's beautiful, highly romantic score was one of the most acclaimed in his distinguished career, earning him a posthumous Academy Award nomination (the composer died in December of 1975). But several critics complained that the film was all too clearly a mere homage to Vertigo, without being original or interesting enough in itself as a thriller. Even the film's ardent fans noted that the film's mystery was easy to figure out long before the main character finally realizes what is going on.
The film was an unexpected financial success. Columbia held on to the movie for almost a year before dumping it into theaters in early fall, traditionally the "dog days" of movie attendance. Obsession managed to obtain enough positive critical notices to spark interest, and it grossed over $4 million at the U.S. box office.
