Obsession

Obsession is a 1976 American neo-noir psychological thriller film directed by Brian De Palma, starring Cliff Robertson, Geneviève Bujold and John Lithgow. The screenplay was written by Paul Schrader, from a story by De Palma and Schrader. Bernard Herrmann provided the film's soundtrack before his death in 1975. The story is about prominent New Orleans businessman Michael Courtland who is haunted by guilt following the death of his wife Elizabeth and daughter Amy during a kidnapping-rescue attempt gone wrong. Years later, he meets and falls in love with Sandra Portinan, a young woman who is the exact look-alike of Elizabeth. Both De Palma and Schrader have pointed to Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) as the major inspiration for Obsession's narrative and thematic concerns. Schrader's script was extensively rewritten and pared down by De Palma before shooting, causing the screenwriter to proclaim a complete lack of interest in the film's subsequent production and release. Completed in 1975, Columbia Pictures picked up the distribution rights but demanded that minor changes be made to reduce potentially controversial aspects of the plot. When finally released in the late summer of 1976, it became De Palma's first substantial box-office success and received mixed reviews from critics.