Obsession Obsession

This week, I'm thinking about Obsession, the Brian De Palma/Paul Schrader Vertigo remix, Obsession, this year's "Monkey's Paw" anti-romance, and "Irresistible," an X-Files episode also about obsession. Spoilers for De Palma's Obsession and "Irresistible."

From the Grave.

Three ideas from horror cinema's past.

◆ Obsession, dir. Brian De Palma, 1976.

Obsession arises out of a fixation on Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, but the ideas and questions it conjures are less about the nature of obsession, more about adaptation—though adaptation here seems to point toward an obsessive attempt to capture something of the mystical power of Hitchcock's classic.

Control. Vertigo offers heated, extravagant emotion in a film shaped with cool, precise control. The emotion resonates especially because of its contrast with the clockwork apparatus it's contained in—a puzzle box of mirrors and repetition. There's a sense in Vertigo, because of the control, that Hitchcock is always ahead of his audience. This is true even when you’ve seen the movie a dozen times. Obsession's equally flamboyant, more bizarre love story lacks the precision and, resultingly, also lacks the emotional potency. The tension between control and emotion makes things gel. In Obsession, we find ourselves way ahead of De Palma—not merely because we've seen Vertigo— and it's a less affecting place to be.

Doubles. Obsession and Vertigo together demonstrate the elasticity of the double as a cinematic device. Vertigo’s Judy is just a woman who's been pulled into a scheme, who's played a part. Obsession’s Sandra is in fact the daughter our protagonist Michael didn’t know was still alive. These are both coherent, non-supernatural approaches to writing a double on whom an obsessed man can project a ghost, but they carry along with them different stories entirely.