Obsession

Name: Obsession
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Released: August 1, 1976
Duration: 98 min
Rating: 59
Cast: Cliff Robertson, Don Hood, Geneviève Bujold, J. Patrick McNamara, John Lithgow

1976

METASCORE

Mixed or average reviews based on 10 Critic Reviews

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Mixed or average reviews based on 7 Ratings

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5.7

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5.7	User Score Mixed or average reviews based on 7 Ratings

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Obsession

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Movie Details & Credits

Columbia Pictures | Release Date: August 1, 1976 | PG

Starring: Cliff Robertson, Don Hood, Geneviève Bujold, J. Patrick McNamara, John Lithgow, Nick Krieger, Stanley J. Reyes, Stocker Fontelieu, Sylvia Kuumba Williams, Wanda Blackman

Summary: A wealthy New Orleans businessman becomes obsessed with a young woman who resembles his wife.

Director: Brian De Palma

Genre(s): Drama, Mystery, Thriller

Rating: PG

Runtime: 98 min

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Critic Reviews

Roger Ebert

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. Read full review

Eric Henderson

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. Read full review

Jonathan Rosenbaum

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. Read full review

Vincent Canby

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. Read full review

Staff (Not Credited)

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. Read full review

TV Guide Magazine Staff (Not Credited

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. Read full review

Walter Goodman

Whatever shred of credibility the movie retains is dispersed by the final, dead serious directorial hocus‐pocus. Read full review

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User Reviews

DawdlingPoet

Nov 22, 2021

This is quite a suspenseful film - a real chilly thriller of sorts. It features a heavy use of stringed instruments to really bring home the Hitchcockian tension. Its, needless to say, quite claustrophobic and I noticed towards the end there appeared to be a mistiness around the bottom ofThis is quite a suspenseful film - a real chilly thriller of sorts. It features a heavy use of stringed instruments to really bring home the Hitchcockian tension. Its, needless to say, quite claustrophobic and I noticed towards the end there appeared to be a mistiness around the bottom of the screen, which gives it a bit of a dream like sense. I felt John Lithgow gave a particularly good performance in this film and its somewhat memorable - certainly not a bad film, I'd recommend it.… Expand

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