Obsession

Production: Independent Sovereign Films

Script/Based on: Alec Coppel

Director of Photography: C.M. Pennington-Richards

Score: Nino Rota

Filmed in Britain, this movie by Hollywood director Edward Dmytryk tells an unusual story of kidnapping and revenge. A respected London doctor discovers his wife’s affair with an American. He therefore kidnaps the man and holds him captive in an abandoned house, where he intends to kill him and dispose of the body in a specially prepared bath of acid. But as we know from other films, perfect murder is a pipe dream, and here, too, the plan begins to unravel, largely due to an intrusive detective and a little dog named Monty. Obsession is the result of a fusion of American and British sensibilities. Dmytryk, who was deemed undesirable across the ocean due to the intensifying anti-communist campaign, brought elements of Hollywood noir and combined them with typical British humor and the setting of seemingly refined gentlemen. The conversations in the gentlemen’s club touch on British-American relations, and the film thus reveals that it is well aware of its cultural straddling of two worlds. (mh)

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