Please note: This was screened in
One of the Hollywood Ten, famously blacklisted for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, Edward Dmytryk spent his exile in England, where he made a pair of extraordinary features. The first of these, Obsession, brought his experience making US noirs to these shores, resulting in an astonishingly dark and unsettling picture.
Robert Newton, best known for playing Bill Sykes in David Lean’s classic adaptation of Oliver Twist, stars as a psychiatrist who discovers his wife is having an affair. He resolves to take revenge by kidnapping and murdering her lover and then dissolving his corpse in a bath of acid.
Written by Alec Coppel, who would later co-write Vertigo, and scored by the great Italian composer Nino Rota (8½, The Godfather), Obsession’s release was originally delayed due to the ongoing court case of the real-life ‘Acid Bath Murderer’, John Haigh.
Obsession has been restored by Powerhouse Films from a 4K scan of the nitrate duplicate negative, preserved at the BFI National Archive. Powerhouse Films publishes the Indicator series of Blu-rays and 4K UHDs, and, like Cinema Rediscovered, is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year.