Obsession (1949)

best movie i've ever seen.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

I hate to see animals in films, I always worry that something awful will happen to them. I usually can figure out what will happen to the people. For those who are like me, I want to report that Monty is okay.Anyway, this was a good film starring Sally Gray and Robert Newton. Newton is Clive, a psychiatrist who surprises his wife (Gray) when she is with another man, Bill (Phil Brown, who worked in England later on after being blacklisted) an American.The next thing you see is Clive relaxing at his club. The newspapers are full of an American, Bill Kronin, who has gone missing. His wife thinks that Clive killed him. But has he? And if he hasn't, where is he?Suspenseful, dark thriller with excellent performances by Newton as the egomaniacal psychiatrist who believes he can outsmart Scotland Yard, Naughton Wayne as the Scotland Yard inspector who claims to be looking into the couple's missing dog, Monty, and Gray, as a wife who goes from man to man. Someone said the Newton character was sympathetic and she looked like a villain. Personally I can't blame her - Clive seemed like a manipulative cold fish.Well done by a director familiar with noir, Edward Dmytryk. Newton would die of alcoholism six years later, and Gray would marry a Lord, retire, and live to age 91. Kronin returned to the US after the blacklist and worked into his 80s. I don't know about Monty; he was cute, though.

Obscure British Crime Film Directed by Blacklisted Edward Dmytryk, as He Exiled Across the Pond. The Superb Acting by All Four Leads Coupled with a Dry, British Upper Lip Script and Bare Bones Production make this a Hidden Gem.Owing Much to Hitchcock and Film-Noir it isn't as Good as the Best of Either Hitch or Noir. The Movie is Entertaining and is One of those Stories that is So Popular in Detective Fiction, The Perfect Murder.Suspenseful Cat and Mouse, or in this case Cat and Dog, Film that is Well Crafted All Around with some Detail and a Gruesome Underbelly. It is Witty, Diabolical, and yet has a Calmness Under Stress and that British Way of being Respectful while the World Shrinks and Crumbles all Around.Overall American Audiences used to More Extremism and Expressionism in Their Crime and Noir Films Might Find this a bit too Calculating and Slow, but that is Part of its Offbeat Charm and is as Good as Any from 1940's and 50's British Crime Cinema.

Robert Newton is personally affronted by the way his wife, actress Sally Gray, and her latest man have been carrying on right in front of him and with the ease and lack of concern for his feelings that she has for him. In fact, she's done this before, flirting with men and being seen with the opposite sex out in public without her husband. Robert had come to the point and decision that he would kill the next man that did it. So this man is his victim. He goes through a very detailed, meticulous plan. He kidnaps him, holds him, and lets him suffer a bit. But how will he actually murder him? What's in the hidden room? This is one of best unknown British films I have seen in a long while. The characters are very real to the viewer, as we are drawn in Robert's world of revenge from the very beginning. We actually feel for Robert Newton, that is, until one moment when it's obvious his state of mind is unreasonable and we see the victim weakening. Enough is enough! Right! Well, you won't believe what happens! If you want a good mystery with unexpected twists, then this is a must-see film.

The British never really "got" noir; the few successes they showed (Night and the City, The Third Man) had American directors or casts to light, or darken, the way for them. Among those directors was Edward Dmytryk, who had started big in the noir cycle with Murder My Sweet, Cornered, and Crossfire but who fled to England in the fallout from the Hollywood witch-hunt -- in which he named names, including Jules Dassin, who directed Night and the City. (Luckily, Dmytryk later returned to Hollywood to helm The Sniper.) Obsession tells the story of a jealous psychiatrist (Robert Newton) with a faithless wife (Sally Gray); he's one of those hyperarticulate verbal sadists whom you want to cosh with a bumbershoot or choke with cucumber tea-sandwiches. He decides to wreak a hellish revenge on the latest of his wife's paramours (the basically harmless Phil Brown; the philandering wife is Sally Gray). He locks the poor Yank in a cellar somewhere in bombed-out London until he fills a bathtub with enough acid to destroy all traces of the corpse (transported daily to the dungeon, along with food and martinis, in hot-water bottles!). Somehow the wife's inquisitive mutt gets mixed up in his plans.... Obsession is very restrained and British in hinting at things that the Americans would shove in our faces, but pulling back in just the nick of time. Dmytryk plays with the conventions expertly, keeping the suspense taut without shocking the bejezus out of us. It's a good thriller that returns to an ordered cosmos with all the laws of fair play observed -- not the anarchic, primal universe of true film noir.