DePalma, borrowing heavily from Hitchcock's Vertigo, made this film in in 1976. (It is possible I hadn't seen Vertigo at that point but it worked for me).Cliff Robertson plays a man haunted by the loss of his wife and daughter in a botched kidnapping scheme. But then he finds a woman who looks remarkably like his wife. Any more information would ruin it. Lovely score, lovely setting. You could do a lot worse. Strangely I never run into this one on TCM. I wondered if Hitchcock reached from beyond the grave and pulled it.
For more forgotten movies, see Todd Mason
14 comments:
Oh, my gosh, I haven't thought of Obsession in a very long time. That is well-done film and I'm glad you reminded me of it.
I remember watching this in the theater and really liking it. Haven't seen it since then, though.
I saw it once, in college, not long after it came out. There's also a faint echo of "Dial M for Murder" if I remember rightly. De Palma is known for his plagiarism--ooops, I mean, of course, his homages to Hitchcock.
Yeah Deb, ol' Brian has been know to (ahem) borrow heavily, shall we say? Some of his movies are pretty good and some are just crap. This was, as far as I can remember it, a pretty decent (ripoff) one.
You should check out his early (very early) GREETINGS and HI, MOM! with De Niro. (My brother in law Buddy was in the latter as a member of the "Be Black, Baby" troupe, by the way.)
Jeff M.
DePalma's movies echo Hitchcock's works. Not that that's a Bad Thing.
I too saw this before VERTIGO (well, it was out of distribution at that point). I think it's a wonderful film and a wonderful homage to the original - in many ways it improves upon the plot and has an ending that, while very weird, is much more life-affirming and less misanthropic - great choice Patti.
I never saw it but it sounds like something I might like.
I have never seen this. Hopefully, I'll run into it on TCM which, in terms of movies telecast, is different here from the one at your end.
Haven't seen this, but De Palma could be so over the top. BODY DOUBLE is totally bonkers. The appearance by Frankie Goes To Hollywood for no reason whatsoever is the probably the weirdest musical segemnt in cinema. And the plot makes absolutely no sense either. My favourite Hitchcock pastiche is Truffaut's VIVEMENT DIMANCHE (U.S. title CONFIDENTIALLY YOURS).
At the time, this seemed to make sense. Although I haven't seen it since. I think this is before he went off the tracks.
Was never a big fan of Robertson, ergo never saw this movie. But it sounds intriguing.
Well, this is typical De Palma (down to the, um, not terribly buyable nature of the events)...but, as frequently, he chose his lead actress well.
I wrote about this many a moon ago on my blog. A strange as it sounds, having seen Vertigo a million times, I did not feel this film at all.
At the time it was suggested that I rewatch to see if there was anything that I missed.
Maybe it is worth a rewatch.
This is a film I know about solely because of the Mad Magazine version called Sobsession.
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