Obsession – Arrow Video (Blu-ray)

Theatrical Release Date: USA, 1976
Director: Brian De Palma
Writers: Brian De Palma, Paul Schrader
Cast: Cliff Robertson, Geneviève Bujold, John Lithgow, Sylvia Kuumba Williams, Wanda Blackman, J. Patrick McNamara, Stanley J. Reyes, Nick Krieger, Stocker Fontelieu, Don Hood, Andrea Esterhazy

Release Date: July 11th, 2011
Approximate Running Time: 98 Minutes 8 Seconds
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Widescreen / 1080 Progressive / MPEG-4 AVC
Rating: 12 (UK)
Sound: LPCM Mono English, DTS-HD 5.1 English
Subtitles: English SDH
Region Coding: Region Free
Retail Price: £19.99 (UK)

"Michael Courtland is a Southern gentleman who seems to have everything - A successful business, a beautiful wife and an adoring young daughter – until a botched kidnapping tears his world apart leaving him widowed, bereaved and bereft. Years later on a trip to Italy, he meets a woman with an uncanny resemblance to his late wife but all is not how it appears as a twisted conspiracy threatens to unhinge his mental shackles, sending him to the knife edge of MADNESS!" - synopsis provided by the distributor

Video: 4.25/5

Here’s the information provided about this release's transfer, "Brand new High Definition transfer of the film."

Obsession comes on a 50 GB dual layer Blu-ray.

Disc Size: 43.3 GB

Feature: 29.6 GB

The source looks great, and though it's been 13 years since this release, it holds up really well. There is an intentional soft focus look throughout, and this transfer does a superb job retaining it. Colors look correct, image clarity and black levels are strong, compression is solid, and there are no issues with digital noise reduction.

Audio: 4.5/5 (LPCM Mono English, DTS-HD 5.1 English)

This release comes with two audio options, a LPCM mono mix in English and a DTS-HD 5.1 mix in English. Both audio tracks sound excellent; dialog comes through clearly, everything sounds balanced, and the score sounds robust. The 5.1 audio track does a great job expanding the original mono source. Included are removable English SDH.

Extras:

Extras for this release include a theatrical trailer (1 minute 35 seconds, LPCM mono English, no subtitles), an archival documentary titled Obsession Revisited, featuring comments by director Brian De Palma, screenwriter Paul Schrader, producer George Litto, actor Cliff Robertson, actress Geneviève Bujold, cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond and editor Paul Hirsch (37 minutes 31 seconds, LPCM stereo English, no subtitles), two short films directed Brian De Palma; Woton’s Wake (27 minutes 59 seconds, 1.33:1 aspect ratio, LPCM mono English, no subtitles) and The Responsive Eye (26 minutes 42 seconds, 1.33:1 aspect ratio, LPCM mono English, no subtitles), reversible cover art, two sided foldout poster (limited to the first pressing), a four panel reversible sleeve (limited to the first pressing), a 112-page perfect bound book (limited to the first pressing) with Paul Schrader’s original screenplay, and a booklet (limited to the first pressing) with an essay written by Brad Stevens.

The Responsive Eye is a straightforward documentary where we are introduced to works of perceptual and optical art. There is a narrator who leads us through this tour of the museum, and we also get to hear audience members react to the art. The Responsive Eye is foreshadowing since most of Brian De Palma’s films deal with deception through trick photography. Ultimately, The Responsive Eye is more informative than entertaining.

Woton’s Wake is more of a collage of ideas than a straightforward story. Woton is a misfit who attacks women and collects souvenirs from their corpses. This short is filled with amazing, iconic images like broken glass and black gloves, both of which would become fixtures in Italian thrillers. What dialog there is shows up in the form of subtitles; the soundtrack consists of only music and sounds. During the last third of the film, Wonton appears in scenes that resemble moments from The Seventh Seal, The Phantom of The Opera, and King Kong.

Summary:

When his wife and daughter are kidnapped, a New Orleans business executive's life is turned upside down. His wife and child are killed during the hostage exchange when the car they were in bursts into flames. Years later, while on a business trip in Florence, the business executive encounters a woman working in a church who looks exactly like his deceased wife. To help him move past the tragic deaths of his wife and child, he embarks on a romance with this look-alike woman that threatens to destroy his sanity once and for all.

Brian De Palma is a filmmaker who has never shied away from his influences. Though many filmmakers have been hailed for appropriating those who have inspired them. That said, no filmmaker has been as vilified as much as Brian De Palma has, the main argument against him being that he has borrowed too often from the films of Alfred Hitchcock. This brings us to Obsession, a film that liberally borrows from Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. And yet to merely write off Obsession as a Vertigo clone would be a disservice to what is arguably one of the best reimaginings of a bona fide cinema classic.

Though a lot of the credit for what ultimately makes Obsession work lies within Paul Schrader’s (Taxi Driver) exemplary screenplay, one must understate Brian De Palma’s near flawless direction and Bernard Herrmann’s (Vertigo) superb, lush romantic score. Other credit should go to the pitch-perfect performances of Cliff Robertson (Charly), who portrays Michael Courtland, a business executive whose wife and child are tragically killed, and Geneviève Bujold (Dead Ringers) in the dual role of Courtland’s wife and her doppelgänger. Another performance of note is John Lithgow, who portrays Courtland’s business partner. Obsession would also mark the first of John Lithgow's three collaborations with Brian De Palma, the other two being Blow Out and Raising Cain.

Though there is a deliberateness to the pacing, the flow of information does a superb job holding your attention. Another strength of the narrative is the meticulously laid-out opening setup, which does a phenomenal job establishing who the protagonist is. Also, early on, Obsession establishes an eerie atmosphere via its use of soft-focus cinematography that reinforces the dreamlike/nightmarish quality of the story at hand. Obsession's most striking moment is a dream sequence whose meaning is filled with ambiguity.

Since its release, Obsession has struggled to find the audience it so deserves. This is not that surprising, since the year that Obsession was released, Brian De Palma had his breakout film, Carrie. One film was adapted from the bestselling novel of the successful author in the history of horror literature. The other film was a clever homage to one of cinema’s most revered filmmakers. Thankfully, in recent years, the films of Brian De Palma have been garnering a reappraisal among film critics and film aficionados, which has led to some of his lesser-known films like Obsession getting the spotlight that had always eluded them. Ultimately, Obsession is a well-made romantic thriller that has all the cinematic bravado and visual flair that one has come to expect from the cinema of Brian De Palma.

Obsession gets a solid release from Arrow Video that comes with a strong audio/video presentation and insightful extras, highly recommended.

Written by Michael Den Boer