Nope, this is not Brian De Palma’s 1976 Obsession — but it shares with that film a tangential connection to The Master of Suspense.
When Alfred Hitchcock hired writer Alec Coppel to contribute to the script for Vertigo, we can imagine the two men getting around to discussing an earlier murder thriller Coppel adapted from his own book, 1949’s Obsession. It’s a genteel veddy-proper English crime tale, with a cuckolded gent taking a diabolical, cold-hearted revenge on his wife’s lover.
Polite & refined English-folk exchange witty remarks in drawing roms … Alfred Hitchcock filmed a similar ‘escapist’ domestic murder tale four years later, an adaption of Frederick Knott’s steel-trap stage play Dial M for Murder. In both stories, the adulterous male is a foreigner, an American. Hitch’s setting is more glamorous and his characters attractively richer. His leading lady is the fashion plate Grace Kelly, and her murderous husband is the suave, urbane Ray Milland.
Coppel’s thriller is set in recovery-era postwar London, a millieu almost as seedy as that depicted in Cavalacanti’s They Made Me a Fugitive and Robert Hamer’s It Always Rains on Sunday, naturalistic ‘Brit Noir’ thrillers that verge on the shameful and sordid. Obsession is set in a London neighborhood marked with abandoned buildings and empty lots with bombing rubble still not entirely cleared away.
The cuckolded Dr. Clive Riordan (the formidable Robert Newton) has been formulating a ‘perfect’ murder for quite some time, motivated to kill by the ongoing illicit affairs of his pampered wife Storm (Sally Gray). He imprisons Storm’s American lover Bill Kronin (Phil Brown) in one of those disused basements. Bill awakens to find himself installed in a dungeon, tethered with a chain restraint just like the one fitted to our good friend Baron Meinster. Riordan is keeping Bill alive until the missing persons case cools down: if things go wrong, at least he won’t get the hangman’s noose. Dr. Riordan also needs time to collect the materials needed for his perfect crime.
The doctor isn’t bothered when Scotland Yard Superintendent Finsbury (Naunton Wayne) begins finding reasons to drop by to discuss the missing Yank. The two men exchange ‘amusing’ banter, dancing around Subject A. Hitchcock likely enjoyed this playful approach to murder. After weeks of confinement, even Bill can muster a sense of humor about his absurd status as a ‘forgotten prisoner.’
The deceptively casual Superintendent Finsbury is a keen observer of speech … a single verbal clue keeps Dr. Riordan on his suspects list.
What might make a 1949 Brit production ‘edgy?’ Horror motifs merge with the setting of a makeshift dungeon, in a conveniently abandoned site where almost any activity could go undetected. The potential for grue becomes even more acute when we discover that our villain intends to dispose of Bill by dissolving him in acid. The preparations for that horrendous plan must have revolted some English critics; it’s still an unpleasant prospect.
Every Dog has its sulfuric acid bath Day.
Obsession may feel like a poke in the eye for viewers that become apoplectic when movies put a lovable animal in jeopardy. The diabolical Dr. Riodan says that he will test his bathtub liquefaction scheme on a particular pooch involved in the plot. ‘Monty the Dog’ would do well to make sure he has a stunt double. Fear not, the puppy dog figures strongly in the film’s twists and turns. Its training was reportedly a major headache for the picture.
Viewers that might be disturbed about atrocious murder plots involving corrosive chemicals should by all means avoid a much-later French film, Francis Girod’s Le trio infernal. Actors Michel Piccoli, Romy Schneider and Mascha Gonska carry through with Dr. Riordan’s method of disposing of their murder victims, in stomach-turning detail.
Director Edward Dmytryk was a top RKO talent with big prospects until he became a prime blacklist target for his political associations. He was the one director targeted alongside the writers known as the Hollywood Ten. All eventually served prison terms for contempt of Congress. Dmytryk regrouped for a year in England, where he was able to direct under his own name, unlike fellow exiles Joseph Losey (Andrea Forzano, Victor Hanbury, Joseph Walton) and Cy Endfield (Charles de Latour, Hugh Raker, C. Raker Endfield). Was the fact that Dmytryk was born in Canada helpful? Or were the Brit producers just happy to hire the services of such a successful Hollywood figure? *
Obsession’s blonde femme trompeuse is also a good fit for the ‘Cool Hitchcock Blonde’ theorized by many critics — Madeleine Carroll, Grace Kelly, Janet Leigh, Eva Marie Saint, Tippi Hedren. Actress Sally Gray shares their beauty and intelligence. The star of the English films Green for Danger and Dangerous Moonlight aka Suicide Squadron is here denied any sentimental foundation. Her Storm Riordan is a serial philanderer who takes none of her lovers seriously. At least the movie does not blame Storm for what is essentially a male problem with possessiveness.
Robert Newton had a reputation for loud, over-the-top performances, and also for bouts of drunkenness that no publicist could hide. The producers reportedly made him post a bond guaranteeing that he’d stay sober until filming was completed. But he’s quite good as the diabolical Dr. Riordan, who one might expect to see played like a Tod Slaughter madman, or Newton’s own famous pirate Long John Silver. We’re impressed by the restraint and finesse Newton brings to the film.
American actor Phil Brown had reportedly been blacklisted as well, and worked again with Dmytryk on his second English hiatus production, the overtly communist Give Us This Day, aka Christ in Concrete. But Brown’s footnote in film history would come much later, in another film role threatened with being ‘dissolved’ into a skeleton — he played Uncle Owen in the original 1977 Star Wars.
Naunton Wayne’s congenial Superintendent embodies the Columbo– style cat & mouse aspect of Alec Coppel’s tale, which for some esteemed reviewers is the factor that tilts Obsession in a positive direction. Wayne is yet another of the film’s Hitchcock connections, through an earlier espionage classic.
Other familiar Brit faces for American film fans are Michael Balfour and Sam Kydd, in small roles. Especially attentive viewers will also get a quick flash of the young Stanley Baker, who had been in pictures for five years but wasn’t yet receiving screen credit. A part in Raoul Walsh’s Captain Horatio Hornblower put him on the map as a featured player, but I don’t know when actual stardom arrived. 1957’s Hell Drivers, which gives Baker the leading role?
Obsession plays with a clever narrative twist or two, but earns our respect by staying faithful to its roots as a ‘wicked’ murder suspenser. Eagle-Lion distributed it in the United States as The Hidden Room, presumably with Dmytryk’s name on the credits (?). The American debut date is listed as the first week of January 1950 … the same year that Dymtryk was back in the U.S.A., serving his time in Federal prison.
