Obsession

Obsession was another Brian De Palma exercise in Hitchockian ventriloquism. With Vertigo withdrawn from circulation and not to resurface until the mid Eighties, De Palma could make a carbon copy of its dead-woman-replaced-by-lookalike-by-obsessed-grieving-lover storyline with impunity. De Palma couldn't resist putting a further twist to the tale by adding an Oedipus Complex to an already preposterously complex plot.

When Michael Courtland's (Cliff Robertson) wife and young daughter are abducted, he involves the police against the kidnapper's instructions and, in a bungled ransom drop, his family are killed. Years pass and, still a grieving widower, Courtland visits Florence on a business trip. Here he meets Sandra (Genevive Bujold), a young woman who bears an uncanny resemblance to his dead wife. As Courtland begins to court her, he tries to turn her into a replica of his late wife. The two eventually marry but on their wedding night Sandra is kidnapped. In a dramatic re-enactment of the original ransom drop - with Herrmann's music driving the action and providing the emotion - Courtland learns that his business partner is behind the whole thing, and that Sandra is his long lost daughter. The final shot of the movie - a dizzying 360 degree camera movement that increases speed with each revolution - shows father and daughter locked in an incestuous embrace.

For this overripe melodrama Herrmann composed a score of ravishing beauty with a sonorous church organ providing its emotional core. The composer had suggested using just such an instrument to William Friedkin when he was asked to write the score for The Exorcist, and, at the time of his death, he was sketching out an organ symphony. Herrmann contributed more than just the music. He devised the title sequence, outlining it frame by frame to the director so that it would dovetail perfectly with his haunting "Main Title". The writing of this most spiritual of his scores seemed to have had a cathartic effect on the composer and he gave way to his emotions, breaking down in tears when the actress Genevieve Bujold thanked him for his contribution. Or maybe, he was simply tired. Just five months away from death in a Hollywood hotel, he found the recording sessions in St Giles Church in Cripplegate in London an exhausting experience, and, just as he had with his Psycho re-recording, asked his friend Laurie Johnson to take over the conducting for the final long cue.

Herrmann did not live to see the release of the movie. It came out in the summer of 1976 to appreciative reviews and a respectable box office take. Along with Taxi Driver, it was nominated for an Academy Award. It didn't win, but it didn't matter. For Herrmann the composition of the work had been its own  reward. the soundtrack was released at the same time as the movie (B003QMZ3JM). I have the incomplete version on the Welles Raises Kane Unicorn disc (UKCD2065), which I'm listening to right now. It suffers from some savage editing and sudden transitions, but it's still a sublime piece of work.