If you’ve seen any other Brian De Palma films – particularly his 1980s output – you’ll know that describing him as ‘a bit much’ is, well, a bit of an understatement. It therefore goes without saying that Obsession (1976), the director’s self-consciously Hitchcockian thriller-cum-melodrama, is not a subtle or understated affair. Various derogatory-sounding epithets come to mind – overwrought, implausible, unintentionally amusing – yet these aren’t really intended as criticisms. In spite of, or perhaps because of, these attributes, the film is a huge amount of fun – slick, stylish, and strikingly scored by the legendary Bernard Herrmann (earning him a posthumous Oscar nomination).

It’s worth dwelling on Herrmann’s score, not just because it was one of his last, but because its self-seriousness – its willingness to buy into the bizarro world that De Palma constructs – is indicative of the movie as a whole. It’s an exquisitely crafted and unashamedly maximalist confection. There are angelic choirs, blaring organs, rumbling timpani, and echoes of Vertigo’s pained suspensions and sinewy strings. There’s even a Dies Irae quotation. It’s a lot – and for 1976, it sounds stridently old-fashioned in its Golden Age grandeur – yet it works, particularly for a film that’s so directly indebted to Hitchcock’s Vertigo. After all, if you’re going to get someone to score a Vertigo pastiche, you may as well get the actual composer of Vertigo.

You might have noticed that I haven’t touched on Obsession’s plot yet, and that’s because it’s mostly a series of nonsensical neo-noir contrivances. However, the same thing could also be said of many classic-era noirs. Notoriously, nobody (including the director) really understood what happened in The Big Sleep, but on a moment-to-moment level, it remains compelling – it feels like it matters, and its thematic material resonates even when the plot itself lacks clarity or airtight logic.

Obsession takes a similar approach. Narratively, it’s a riff on Vertigo, with hints of Rebecca and Don’t Look Now. A wealthy businessman’s wife and daughter are killed in a tragic accident, and after sixteen years, the widower becomes obsessed with another woman who closely resembles his dead wife. Romance, betrayal, and general doppelganger uncanniness ensue. The screenplay – by Taxi Driver’s Paul Schrader – is certainly not his greatest work, but it goes to some dark and strange places, integrating an undercurrent of incest that can only be described as ‘icky’.

“The Deep South setting is more than just window-dressing”

More than anything else, the film is let down by its central performance, something De Palma himself acknowledged in a 2015 documentary looking back at his career. Cliff Robertson’s portrayal of Michael Courtland – the businessman at the heart of the story – is bizarrely lacking in emotion. Even at the funeral of his wife and daughter, he maintains a puzzled, slightly bored expression, as though the events unfolding around him are mildly bemusing rather than life-alteringly tragic. It’s a performance so disengaged that it sits right at the edge of parody, often resembling the deadpan seriousness of Leslie Nielsen in a Zucker Brothers comedy.

In contrast, Geneviève Bujold’s dual performance as Elizabeth/Sandy – Michael’s dead-wife and not-wife – is nuanced and endearing, embodying both characters with a warmth that helps to paper over the story’s more seismic cracks. John Lithgow also turns up to chew scenery – would you expect anything less? – sporting a Deep South drawl that approaches Benoit Blanc levels of theatricality. It’s the good kind of hammy though – Lithgow’s performances are always so committed that they pair nicely with De Palma’s showy exuberance (see also: 1981’s Blow Out).

“To the modern eye, the film’s commitment to on-location shooting feels quietly radical”

Dodgy accents aside, the Deep South setting is more than just window-dressing. Obsession was shot in – and is also set in – New Orleans, which is evocatively framed by cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond. Robertson’s character lives in a vast colonial townhouse of the kind indelibly associated with the city, its sprawling hallways resembling a Louisianian Manderley (which was of course famously depicted by – you guessed it – Hitchcock). The film’s southern milieu helps to differentiate it from Vertigo, creating its own sense of place and mood, and facilitating a particularly stylish sequence aboard one of the Mississippi’s iconic paddle-steamers.

The other key location – again beautifully rendered by Zsigmond – is Florence, to which Michael travels for a business trip and meets Sandy for the first time. To the modern eye, the film’s commitment to on-location shooting feels quietly radical. Having become acclimatised to the inert digital backdrops of so much modern cinema – even from noted visual stylists like Guillermo del Toro in his recent Frankenstein adaptation – it was a real pleasure to experience the depth and physicality of Florence’s atmospheric side streets and sprawling piazzas.

Obsession’s Florence sequence also reveals the film’s most interesting thematic gesture. When Michael first encounters Sandy, he watches her restoring a fresco on the wall of the Basilica di San Miniato al Monte. The fresco is a palimpsest – an artwork that has been overwritten, but where traces of the original remain. As Sandy explains, the church’s custodians must decide whether to strip away the paintwork to reveal the version beneath, or proceed with a full restoration that would obscure the original from view. This palimpsestic metaphor is a neat encapsulation of De Palma’s intertextual proximity to Hitchcock – Obsession is a re-inscription of Vertigo, adding new layers and pigments but retaining Hitchcock’s indelible brushstrokes. Although the resulting paint job is not entirely successful, it remains a fascinating amalgam of Hitchcock’s formal precision and De Palma’s operatic excess.