Obsession (1976) on Netflix
PG19761h 38mDramaMysteryThriller
New Orleans developer Michael Courtland loses his wife Elizabeth and daughter Amy when a kidnapping rescue fails. Years later in Florence he meets Sandra Portinari, who is Elizabeth's double.
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- Netflix2.2/5
- IMDb6.7/1013,675 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes77%
Trailer
Plot summary
Michael Courtland, a real estate developer in New Orleans, blames himself for the deaths of his wife Elizabeth and their daughter Amy during a kidnapping and a rescue attempt that went wrong. Sixteen years on, he still mourns them, and the plot where he has built a monument in Elizabeth's memory, modeled on the Florentine church where they met, is land he refuses to develop. His partner Robert LaSalle talks him into a work trip to Florence, where Courtland visits that church again and finds Sandra Portinari, a young woman restoring a painting there who is the image of Elizabeth. He courts Sandra and brings her home to New Orleans to marry her, over the doubts of friends who think he sees only his late wife in her.
Cast
- Wanda Blackmanas Amy Courtland
- Stanley J. Reyesas Insp. Brie
- Nick Kreigeras Farber
- Andrea Esterhazyas D'Annunzio
- Thomas Carras Paper Boy
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Obsession (1976)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Paul Schrader's original screenplay, titled Déjà Vu, ran much longer than the finished film, with a coda set 10 years beyond the current ending. Brian De Palma found it unfilmable and rewrote and condensed the finale after Schrader refused the requested changes.
SPOILER
Columbia executives were uneasy about the incest theme, so dissolves and visual "ripples" were inserted over the wedding and post-wedding scenes of Cliff Robertson and Geneviève Bujold to suggest their marriage was only consummated in a dream.- Composer Bernard Herrmann agreed that Paul Schrader's original ending should be jettisoned, telling De Palma after reading the script, "Get rid of it, that'll never work".
- Bernard Herrmann's score earned him a posthumous Academy Award nomination; the composer died in December 1975, a few hours after completing the score of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver.
