L'Obsédé

Since I first saw Obsession 30 years ago it's remained one of my favourite post War British thrillers – although directed by and starring Americans it's nowhere near noir but a very British take on a calculated attempt at a perfect murder. The idea shown is almost as foolproof and institutionally British as dismembered body parts in suitcases checked into railway station lockers. Some cogent concise acting, scripting, production and black & white photography all go to make an engrossing 93 minutes UK TV running time.

Erudite doctor Robert Newton plays a husband who gets terminally jealous of his philandering wife Sally Gray and decides to bump off her current lover Phil Brown in an ingenious and supposedly undetectable manner. Bomb ravaged London comes into play here with the kidnapped lover temporarily installed in a derelict hidden room underneath a broken brick wasteland to await his gruesome but quick death at manic Newton's hands. And it is Newton's picture - although Naunton Wayne gives him a run for his money later on - his perfect diction matching his impassive body language (maybe exhausted after all the gurning he'd just done in Oliver Twist) and creating a perfectly clinical analysis of the mind of a hopeful murderer. Monty sure was a lucky dog to have escaped a bath though!

A great little film with plenty for you to think about and an atmosphere all of its own when the British made good British films with only the British in mind – even with Yank input!

Robert Newton gives a restrained and powerful performance as a cuckolded doctor exacting revenge on his high-spirited wife by abducting her young American lover, then keeping her guessing as to where he is, and whether he is still alive. Sally Gray is nothing short of brilliant as the wife. And, Naughton Wayne is magnificent as the dogged police inspector. Obsession combines brilliantly chiseled characterisations with an extremely intelligent and literate screenplay. Keep it on tape, because no one gets all the nuances the first time he or she watches it, but it's all put together so brilliantly the repeat viewings become a glorious pleasure.

This film is based on a novel ('A Man about a Dog') by Alec Coppel, who wrote Hitchcock's 'Vertigo'. This story is far creepier and more sinister than that one. Robert Newton, who the previous year had entranced people as Bill Sikes in 'Oliver Twist', and who was to be cursed with the role of Long John Silver the next year, from which he would struggle to escape for the rest of his life, here shows what a fine standard British actor he was. He plays a highly articulate and urbane London psychiatrist who beneath his mask is actually an obsessive and sadistic psychopath. Anyone who thinks psychiatrists cannot be more mentally ill than their patients is naive: I have known two psychiatrists personally (no, I was not a patient) who were totally insane. It is a good place to hide when you are psychotic, as no one can question you. Newton is perfect in this part, and his calm never leaves him till the end, as he carries out his odious plans with the unruffled manner of a cleaner dusting a bookshelf (and he has plenty of bookshelves). Newton is married to a compulsively unfaithful wife, played with style by the glamorous Sally Gray (who made one more film the next year and then became Lady Oranmore and retired from the screen). One day he snaps, and Phil Brown is the American lover who bears the brunt. As Newton says to him: 'You've heard about the straw that broke the camel's back? Well, you're the straw.' With meticulous cunning, Newton imprisons Brown in a cellar on a deserted bombsite (this is just after the War, and bombsites were everywhere in London). He holds him for months, and Brown very cleverly creates a character who attempts to bond with his captor, in the hope that he can somehow escape. Brown is kept chain within a chalked circle of his subterranean den, and Newton stands just at the edge of it and lectures Brown about how each time he comes he brings a hot water bottle full of yet more acid with which he is slowly filling the bath tub into which he will place Brown's body when it comes time to kill him, where it will dissolve. 'So I'll just go down the plug?' asks Brown, and Newton solemnly agrees. This film is really nasty and does not let up in showing us the calculating manner in which a psychopath goes about his carefully coordinated crime plan. Ed Dmytryk directs chillingly and tautly, and surprisingly the music is by Nino Rota of Italy, who later would become famous for composing the music for major Italian directors like Visconti and Fellini. Naunton Wayne plays a Scotland yard superintendent with a calm and menace which exceeds even that of Newton's. This film in a sense is a study in the mannered British way of behaving, and the politenesses exchanged between a criminal and a detective who are enemies, as well as between a husband and a wife who loathe each other but for some reason never split up, living on in their elegant house with no children but the dog Monty, played by a real dog called Monty. And here is the rub: Monty messes things up in a major way, but that would be telling. For those who can bear the extremely grisly and claustrophobic aspects of this sick tale, which was a forerunner of 'The Collector' with Samantha Eggar, this film could be recommended as good noir fare. But it is not pleasant, and it lacks the surreal and haunting quality of 'Vertigo' entirely. It is certainly a savage comment on the arch hypocrisy of traditional upper middle class British manners, and all that they can conceal, such as 'something nasty in the shed'.

Robert Newton is a Doctor and a gentleman. But even he can be pushed too far from his manipulative cheating wife, Storm. Sally Gray gives a devastatingly perfect performance as Storm. Her callow suitor-du-jour, an American sailor named Bill, doesn't have the faintest idea of the peril he's in for when he dates her. Newton's character has nothing in particular against Bill. In fact, he rather likes him. He just happens to be the straw that broke the camel's back.

It's all played out in a single hidden room that no one knows Newton owns, and the psychological effects the situation has on its three principal is explored to its utmost. If you enjoy film noir, and taut character studies, this is the movie for you. Don't miss the dark-humoured twist ending!

A London psychiatrist (Robert Newton) catches his wife (Sally Gray) in an affair with an American (Phil Brown). Apparently this is not her first affair, and Newton, as the objective and self-controlled psychiatric professional, decides to settle things in a well-thought-out way by first kidnapping and then imprisoning the American in a hidden room not too far removed from the actual residence, with the ultimate goal of killing him without leaving any incriminating traces. The film could have been more dramatic by playing up the relationship between Newton and the beautiful Sally Gray. Gray seems to be telling the viewer that Newton never really loved her, although it also seems as if her youth and passion were too much for his middle-aged character to handle. In any event the plot, which is remarkably well done, inevitably leads to a police or Scotland Yard type investigation and eventual solving of the crime, rather than a dark story.