(Schwarzer Engel [de])
USA 1976
d: Brian De Palma
Columbia Tristar Home Video (Region 1 us)
sc: Paul Schrader (based on a story by Brian De Palma, Paul Schrader)
c: Vilmos Zsigmond (Technicolor, Panavision)
e: Paul Hirsch
pd: Jack Senter
m: Bernard Herrmann
p: George Litto, Harry N. Blum (Columbia Pictures / Yellowbird Productions)
w: Cliff Robertson, Geneviève Bujold, John Lithgow, Sylvia Kuumba Williams, Wanda Blackman, J. Patrick McNamara, Stanley J. Reyes, Nick Kreiger, Stocker Fontelieu, Don Hood, Andrea Esterhazy, Thomas Carr, Tom Felleghy, Nella Simoncini Barbieri, John Creamer
pr: 01 Aug 1976
aw: Academy Awards 1977 Nominated Oscar Best Music, Original Score
rt: 98:05 min
dvd-rl: 26 Jun 2001
ar: 2.35:1 (16:9 Anamorphic Widescreen)
sd: English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround • English Dolby 2.0 Surround • English Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono • French Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
st: English, French, Spanish; CC
supp: • "Obsession Revisited", produced and directed by Laurent Bouzereau (35:59 min)
• Original Theatrical Trailer (1:45 min)
• Bonus Trailers for "Against All Odds", "Someone To Watch Over Me" and "Devil In A Blue Dress"
• Biographies
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. Virtuoso gliding camera movements do not necessarily a good film make. The main problem with the film, in fact, is the excruciatingly slow pace; although if you've seen "Vertigo", the story itself - of a businessman haunted by guilt about his wife's death, and getting involved years later with her lookalike - will fail to yield the narrative surprises and suspense required in a thriller.
— GA, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
De Palma's early obsession was pure cinema, and so is his Obsession. An exaggerated homage to Hitchcock's VistaVision jewel Vertigo, with its own copycat score by Bernard Herrmann, it is a film about remakes and make-overs, but its luscious visual surface is a separate masterpiece of widescreen color cinematography by Vilmos Zsigmond. Paul Schrader's screenplay follows a wealthy southerner (Cliff Robertson) into near insanity after his wife (Genevieve Bujold) and daughter are kidnapped. In Florence, in the same church where he first met his wife, he encounters her veritable double (also played by Bujold). Tracking her amid the sidestreets and statuary, the camera cleverly hidden in his gaze, he begins the restoration of his first wife. Obsession is a meditation on the human capacity for investing place with memory, with a magnificent, 360-degree pan that takes fifteen years to complete, and a stunning concentration on architectural surfaces. And while in his later films (Blow-Out, etc.) De Palma's camera stalks to kill, in Obsession his exploration of point-of-view seems designed not to offend, but to astound.
— PFA
