• Source: Obsession (1949 film)

Obsession, released in the United States as The Hidden Room, is a 1949 British crime film directed by Edward Dmytryk. It is based on the 1947 novel A Man About a Dog by Alec Coppel, who also wrote the screenplay for the film. Obsession was entered into the 1949 Cannes Film Festival.




Plot


Clive Riordan, a wealthy London psychiatrist, learns that his wife Storm is romantically involved with Bill Kronin, an American. He resolves to exact revenge on both by committing the perfect murder of Kronin.
After kidnapping Kronin at gunpoint, Riordan keeps him prisoner for months in a hidden room accessed from a nearby garage while authorities mount a search for the missing American. During one of his daily visits to bring food and supplies, Riordan is unknowingly trailed by his dog Monty. Fearing that Monty might lead others to the secret location, Riordan resolves to keep the dog with Kronin. The doctor reveals to Kronin that he plans to kill him and dissolve his corpse in an acid bath.
Riordan's plan appears to be succeeding until Superintendent Finsbury from Scotland Yard visits the doctor's office. Finsbury claims to be investigating the missing dog, but as the conversation drifts to the Kronin case it becomes clear that Finsbury harbors suspicions about Riordan.
Feeling the noose tightening, Riordan decides it’s time to act and poisons Kronin, only to discover that he has trained Monty to empty the acid bath by pulling the plug chain. The police find Riordan’s car in the garage, which leads them to the hidden room and Kronin’s body. Realizing his plan has failed, Riordan resigns himself to his fate. Finsbury arrives to arrest him, revealing that Kronin survived and that Riordan has escaped a charge of murder.




Cast


Robert Newton as Dr. Clive Riordan
Sally Gray as Storm Riordan
Phil Brown as Bill Kronin
Naunton Wayne as Superintendent Finsbury
James Harcourt as Aitkin (butler)
Ronald Adam as Clubman
Allan Jeayes as Clubman
Olga Lindo as Mrs Humphries
Russell Waters as Flying Squad detective
Sam Kydd as Club steward




Background


Alec Coppel wrote the story as a play when he was living in Sydney during World War II. He adapted it into a novel while travelling to London. Coppel titled the play and the novel A Man About a Dog, but in the United States, the novel was titled Over the Line.
The play opened in London in April 1946 and the novel was published in 1948, although many critics commented that the novel felt similar to a play. Another production of the play was staged in London in May 1949.




Production


Film rights were acquired by the British producer Noel Madison. He also bought the rights to two other thrillers, Four Hours to Kill by Norman Krasna and The Last Mile by John Wexley.
The film's director Edward Dmytryk, had recently left Hollywood following his appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He travelled to England in mid-1948 and was granted a work permit by the Ministry of Labour under the foreign directors' quota agreement between producers and the film industry's trade unions. He signed a contract to direct the film with Nat Bronstein of Independent Sovereign Films on 1 October 1948.
Filming took place near Grosvenor House and Coppel's home, which was converted into a temporary dressing room.
Dmytryck went over the script with Coppel at a hotel at Lake Annecy. He later said Bronstein wanted a part in the film for his opera singing girlfriend, Marushka, and the producer was upset when one could not be found.
Dmytryck says Robert Newton had to place a £20,000 bond guaranteeing his sobriety during production which went for 30 days. The director says Newton only started drinking on the last day of filming.
The plot involves disposing a body by dissolving it in acid. Because this appeared to have similarities to the case of the murderer John Haigh, the British Board of Film Censors initially refused to grant the film a certificate and its release was delayed.




Reception


Dymytryk later wrote the film "was eventually released to good reviews and decent box-office returns. But it was seven months before the film was in the bag, and in those seven months, Jean and I learned how to triumph over adversity—at least temporarily—kept afloat by a weird mixture of grief and happiness, of love and anxiety, but never hope. Still, it was a period of small victories that permits us to remember it with a certain nostalgia, and when compared to the year and a half that followed, it was a picnic."




= Critical

=
Variety wrote that that the film is slow-paced at first but becomes suspenseful. The New York Times called it "a first-rate study in suspense and abnormal psychology."
In 1993, Kendal Patterson of the Los Angeles Times described the film as an early predecessor of Fatal Attraction.




References






External links


Obsession at IMDb
Obsession at AllMovie
Obsession at the TCM Movie Database
Review at Variety
Review of May 1949 production of A Man About a Dog at Variety




Notes


Dmytryk, Edward (1978). It's a hell of a life, but not a bad living. NYT Times Books. ISBN 978-0-8129-0785-8.

Kata Kunci Pencarian:

• Obsesi
• Ichiro Sugai
• Linda Lovelace
• Machiko Kyō
• National Board of Review Awards 2004
• National Board of Review Awards 1976
• Abraham Zapruder
• Jane Wyman
• Anne Frank
• Gian Luigi Rondi
• Obsession (1949 film)
• Obsession
• Magnificent Obsession (1935 film)
• 1949 in film
• The Great Gatsby (1974 film)
• Oppenheimer (film)
• Coralie Fargeat
• Naunton Wayne
• Judy Nugent
• Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film