This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

I was enjoying this as an essay about itself/about remaking VERTIGO (and probably some other stuff I missed while in the bathroom), then that masterful final sequence hit and the needle went from 3 1/2 to four stars, because I realized I kind of cared about these tragic characters too.

If the critics and nerdlingers who decried this for being "nothing but a Hitchcock knock-off" only knew what the popular cinema landscape was like now, they would probably kill their own wife and daughter for something even remotely as technically well executed and idiosyncratic as this.

When John Lithgow shows up in the opening scene talking about "New Awluhns" you know it's gonna be a good time

DePalma's Hitchcock films >>> DePalma's Gangster films.

One of those hang my head in shame first-time watches for me. I have no idea why... I love DePalma and have seen nearly everything he's made. I enjoyed watching but have to agree with Hitchcock who thought this film was a "virtual remake of Vertigo."

Watched the Shout Factory Blu-ray

Special Features:
- Producing Obsession – An Interview With Producer George Litto
- Editing Obsession – An Interview With Editor Paul Hirsch
- Obsession Revised – Vintage Featurette Featuring Interviews With Director Brian De Palma, Cliff Robertson, And Geneviève Bujold
- Theatrical Trailer
- Radio Spots
- Still Gallery

"I don't just like movies like this; I relish them. Sometimes overwrought excess can be its own reward." One of my favorite Ebert quotations, and a feeling I carry with me through movies that don't necessarily "work" but work on me.

What's good film criticism anyway if not love distorted by memory and private fears?

Not so much a remake of Vertigo as an echo of it, or maybe a memory. Even Vertigo, when you boil it down to its generic plot skeleton, is a detective mystery about a guy figuring out a complex murder plot, but this goes even further by running on pure emotion - Cliff Robertson's hero never solves anything, and spends virtually the entire movie in a transfixed, wet-eyed torpor. By the end, this emotion has blossomed into possibly the best protracted slow-motion climax of De Palma's career, and maybe (if you're paying attention) his most disturbing ending.

About that: I noticed here a motif that recurs a few times in the De Palmaverse, the repetition of a certain word or phrase to end the movie on a note of trauma - "there was no body because there was no murder" in Sisters, "Daddy" here, and "it's a good scream" in Blow Out. Any others?

You've gotta hand it to De Palma, the director has such a firm grip on his own sense of craft and style, it virtually doesn’t matter if his stories lack credibility because his films always look so damn good and ‘Obsession’ is no exception. Every shot and every scene is so well composed that it could literally be mistaken for a 1970’s Gucci commercial, and here, the focus on atmosphere is so strong that it almost dabbles in the realms of surrealism to a euphoric effect. There are twists and turns aplenty, but it’s not until the final reveal that we learn the true nature of his grotesque mystery, where a clash between instinctive romanticism and perverse theatricality give meaning to the preceding masquerade of illusions. 

Brilliant, just brilliant!

It’s like watching vertigo with a sprinkle of old boy style incest. I’d like to think that if face book existed back then Paul Schrader would be wagging his fist and complaining online cause they cut out too much of the incest in this but for now I can only dream.

But Ellman lives in 1975! Micheal lives in 1959.

Man, Bernard Hermann is really doing all the heavy lifting in this pale imitation of Hitchcock. I almost want to see the three hour version written by Paul Schrader with the third act that takes place in the future because I was just too aware of the Vertigo and Hitchcock influence. I don't even think De Palma ripped off Hitchcock that interestingly either. I think he did that a lot better in something like Body Double. It's really his score and Genevieve Bujold's performance that made this interesting, but De Palma is always kind of hit or miss for me and this is basically a miss, despite the elements I really liked.

perverse

Brian De Palma and Paul Schrader team up for a spin on Hitchcock’s Vertigo. The result is really weird and fucked up. Bernard Hermann’s score actually feels evil.

The lengths the characters got to get why they want in this film is literally insane. Such dreamlike cinematography, it has an overexposed feel where the sky shines through everything that is quite appealing and appropriate. I must admit, I didn’t see many of the twists because I was too tied up in the present story.

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

Florence is such a beautiful city ! The introduction of movie really freaked me. It's a movie that makes you very uncomfortable. The final twist was predictable but it was well done !

Obsession. Def: A Compulsive, often unreasonable idea or emotion; ; High melodrama, creeping insanity and barely contained delirium abound in this dizzying tribute to the high tension thrillers of Alfred Hitchcock from director Brian De Palma (Carrie, Scarface, Dressed to Kill); ; 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!; ; A master class in mounting unease and clammy palmed claustrophobia, Obsession is a classic 70s thriller with an evil twist that will leave you speechless.

WTF. This my first De Palma film that I didn’t really like. I was disturbed by the man putting his wife’s life on the much younger woman in Verigo. I can’t tell if the final in this makes it better or worse. That she was willing to commit incest for revenge, or was it all a dream. The age of the actors really make this confusing. This really felt like De Palma said let’s take the story from Verigo and really trash it up De Palma style. Then someone said we can’t actually have them have sex so let’s make it a dream. That breaks a lot of the story. Well Lithgow makes a good villain. Ugh

Brian De Palma's Vertigo, literally.