Synopsis
A wealthy New Orleans businessman becomes obsessed with a young woman who resembles his wife.
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Cast
- Cliff RobertsonMichael Courtland
- Geneviève BujoldElizabeth Courtland
- John LithgowRobert Lasalle
- Sylvia Kuumba WilliamsMaid
- Wanda BlackmanAmy Courtland
- J. Patrick McNamaraThird Kidnapper
- Stanley J. ReyesInspector Brie
- Nick KreigerFarber
- Stocker FontelieuDr. Ellman
- Don HoodFerguson
Recommendations
- 75
Chicago Sun-Times
Sometimes overwrought excess can be its own reward. If Obsession had been even a little more subtle, had made even a little more sense on some boring logical plane, it wouldn't have worked at all. - 75
Chicago Reader
There's nothing in the aesthetic and neo-Freudian delirium within hailing distance of Vertigo, and the plot's often more complicated than complex, but Herrmann's overpowering score and De Palma's endlessly circling camera movements do manage to cast a spell. - 75
Slant Magazine
Bujold’s enthusiasm as a performer redeems the entire picture, especially when she’s asked to perform flashback scenes that shouldn’t work, but, thanks to her, represent another of De Palma’s fearlessly experimental whims. - 70
The A.V. Club
The heightened luridness of Obsession does succeed in making Vertigo’s twisty plot seem all the more inessential to that film’s power. What both movies do is cut a tale of murder and madness down to its essence, exploring characters who’ve been damaged by social expectations and their own desires. - 70
Variety
Robertson’s low-key performance is as crucial to the manifold surprise impact as Bujold’s versatile, sensual and effervescent charisma. - 50
Time Out
Schrader and De Palma's tribute to Hitchcock's Vertigo may lack the misogyny and bloodbath sensationalism of De Palma's later work, but it's still dressed up in a mortifyingly vacuous imitation of the Master's stylistic touches. - 50
TV Guide Magazine
For a De Palma film, Obsession has much more suspense than violence, even if much of the premise and motivations are shamelessly culled from Hitchcock's Vertigo, as is composer Bernard Herrmann. The lack of originality, however, doesn't make Obsession any less effective, and the film has been generally overlooked in the spotty De Palma canon. - 50
The New York Times
The Schrader screenplay, based on an original story by Mr. Schrader and Mr. De Palma, is most effective when it's most romantic, and transparent when it attempts to be mysterious.
