Sadly Over-hyped

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Edward Dmytryk directed this British film Obsession during his exile years in the United Kingdom and was fortunate to have Robert Newton in the lead. As the cheated upon husband Newton who could chew up the scenery when let loose gets a firm directorial hand. His performance here is really brilliant because it is so carefully controlled.Newton is married to Sally Gray who isn't all that subtle with her affairs. But this one with American Phil Brown is just one too many. He takes Brown prisoner and locks him in a dungeon in one of the bombed out buildings of London at the time. There he keeps Brown on a chain like a dog, but when Gray's pet terrier Monty follows Newton to the dungeon and has to be kept there, it's the missing dog that proves to be the mistake Newton didn't count on.I have to say that Newton did have a meticulously conceived plan for the murder and that he did have a reason other than sadism for keeping him alive for weeks until he was ready to do the deed.Like Dmytryk, Brown was also a victim of the blacklist and glad to be working over there. His American speech pattern and idiom also contributes to Newton's downfall.Kudos also go to Naunton Wayne as the Scotland Yard police inspector who pursues this investigation with Columbo like intensity. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if the Columbo character was inspired by Obsession and Naunton Wayne.This is one top drawer British noir feature.

I liked this crime movie about the classic love triangle - young, beautiful wife-older, ugly husband-younger and more attractive lover - very much. It kept me hooked! It is not a crime story in the modern sense of the word - I mean with a lot of violence, blood, gore, dead unpleasant-looking corpses etc. - but more like a murder mystery from the golden age of murder mysteries (such as Agatha Christie's). The difference from the latter is that we as viewers know the truth from the beginning, and that the enjoyment comes from seeing the criminal, his intended victim, and the superintendent who is trying to solve the case, try to outwit each other. It is pleasant to watch just because it is so free from violence - everybody speaks calmly and acts like civilized people. I liked the superintendent, played by Naunton Wayne, especially much - such a charming, unassuming and intelligent man!

Since I first saw Obsession 30 years ago it's remained one of my favourite post War British thrillers – although directed by and starring Americans it's nowhere near noir but a very British take on a calculated attempt at a perfect murder. The idea shown is almost as foolproof and institutionally British as dismembered body parts in suitcases checked into railway station lockers. Some cogent concise acting, scripting, production and black & white photography all go to make an engrossing 93 minutes UK TV running time.Erudite doctor Robert Newton plays a husband who gets terminally jealous of his philandering wife Sally Gray and decides to bump off her current lover Phil Brown in an ingenious and supposedly undetectable manner. Bomb ravaged London comes into play here with the kidnapped lover temporarily installed in a derelict hidden room underneath a broken brick wasteland to await his gruesome but quick death at manic Newton's hands. And it is Newton's picture - although Naunton Wayne gives him a run for his money later on - his perfect diction matching his impassive body language (maybe exhausted after all the gurning he'd just done in Oliver Twist) and creating a perfectly clinical analysis of the mind of a hopeful murderer. Monty sure was a lucky dog to have escaped a bath though!A great little film with plenty for you to think about and an atmosphere all of its own when the British made good British films with only the British in mind – even with Yank input!

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.