Obsession

As the attempt to rescue his kidnapped wife Elizabeth (Geneviève Bujold) and daughter Amy (Wanda Blackman) fails, both are killed leaving husband and father Michael (Cliff Robertson) devastated and alone. 16 years of mourning later, Michael travels to Italy and meets Sandra Portinari (Geneviève Bujold), an art restorer, whose face he seems to have seen somewhere before. Deeply in love and still haunted by the painful memory of his wife and daughter Michael fears that his new love interest may face a similar fate.

Obsession is both crazy and quasi-relevant as well as being the most boldly Hitchcock derived movie in De Palma’s filmography. Brian De Palma was aiming to create a love story so strong that it would be possible to transgress the boundaries of time without jarring the audience. Screenwriter Paul Schrader and De Palma both loved Vertigo by Hitchcock, rather than writing an article about the Hitchcock classic, they made a movie that expressed what fascinated them about the film.

Released in the late summer of 1976, this psychological thriller succeeded to achieve solid box office results and was welcomed by a mixed reaction by critics. De Palma had once again successfully managed to tell a highly cinematic, Hitchcockian mystery with class and style and unique quality.