Obsession

Years after his wife and daughter were abducted and killed in a recovery operation gone south, a prominent New Orleans developer (Cliff Robertson) becomes enamored with a young woman who bears a striking resemblance to his late spouse (Geneviève Bujold, in dual roles). Obsession, Brian De Palma’s thrilling ode to Hitchcock, from a screenplay by Paul Schrader, is a disturbing and seductive fantasia about a man haunted by the past and consumed by grief and desire. Bernard Herrmann’s tremendous score, a soundtrack that the noted composer’s biographer Steven C. Smith called “a summation of his film skills, and an affirmation of the human spirit,” elevates De Palma and Schrader’s material to even greater, more delirious heights.