Another day, another movie clearly inspired by Vertigo. This time, I watched 1976's Obsession, which has been acknowledged as Vertigo-derived by its director and screenwriter, Brian De Palma and Paul Schrader. Very much like De Palma's Blow Out, I appreciated the sentiment of a fellow Vertigo nut but found it not quite as satisfying as other Vertigo-derived films such as Mississippi Mermaid or Mulholland Drive.
I did like it more than Blow-Out, though. It actually has a score by Bernard Herrmann and it's among his best. Vilos Zsigmond's cinematography is lush and lovely, especially for the location shots in Rome. Most of the film's set in New Orleans, though, and that looks good, too.
Courtland (Cliff Robertson) is a wealthy real estate magnate married to Elizabeth (Genevieve Bujold), with whom he has a nine year old daughter, in 1959. His wife and daughter are kidnapped and when a police scheme to foil the kidnappers goes wrong Courtland loses both wife and daughter. Sixteen years later, Courtland is still obsessed with his departed loved ones. Like Scottie wandering listlessly in Vertigo before he spots the spitting image of Madeleine, Courtland comes across a woman who looks just like his wife, in the exact same Roman cathedral where he met her, no less.
I figured out the twist ending at this point. It adds a salacious quality to the Vertigo blueprint that I felt flattened the story a bit, draining it of nuance and psychological complexity. Apparently Schrader's original screenplay was much longer and made a point about obsession transcending time and space. It actually sounds a lot like Wuthering Heights. I'd have liked to have seen that version of the film.
Obsession is available on The Criterion Channel.
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