OBSESSION

The fine art of conversation is rarely taken of advantage of in movies. Dialogue (not exactly conversation) is usually a mere connector of events. A constant need to move, both narratively and literally, is one of the fundamental disadvantages of cinema over theater. While the stage was built for dictum, movies, almost by their very nature, can seldom stop to chat. Some have tried, but test cases like My Dinner with Andre seem destined to remain perceived as out-of-medium experiments with many admirers but few breeders. In other words, they will never redefine the genre on any substantial level.

             And yet, Obsession (or The Hidden Room, as it was released in the States) relies almost entirely on talk and is a clever exciting thriller, a testament to the possibilities of good writing carrying a picture. Almost all of the film takes place within a musty old garage where a young American (Phil Brown) is being held prisoner by a deranged London doctor (Robert Newton).

If this sounds like a B-picture set-up, Obsession has many surprises in store. Not the least of them is the thought given to the dialogue, which tells us practically everything we come to know about the two leads. Screenwriter Alec Coppel, adapting the film from his own novel A Man About A Dog, itself inspired by a real case in London, is never superfluous with the dialogue, building both the characters and the narrative almost entirely through the use of words.

What do we learn? Both the prisoner and the captor defy expectations. Kronin, the American, is reputed as something of a playboy and begins an affair with Dr. Riordan’s wife (Sally Gray). When the doctor discovers their romance he doesn’t kill the young man (at least not right away) but rather uses him as the test for his perfect murder test he’d long been planning. He will hold him in a hidden dungeon, keeping him alive until the investigation dies down. Then, Riordan will dispose of the body with a cell dissolving formula he’s concocted in his secret lab.

            Obsession takes place mainly in two closed spaces, the Riordan household and the dungeon, where some of the smartest dialogue is featured. The house `is the setting for a well written and brilliantly executed opening in which the doctor confronts his flighty wife and her lover. From the start it’s a cat and mouse game, the doctor in complete control the entire time. He knows when he’s being lied to, what they’re thinking, and even how the encounter will unfold. He’s had it planned for some time after all.

            But the ingenuity of his plan is not revealed until the movie discloses what becomes of Kronin. All of London thinks he’s simply vanished, but it’s no mystery for us when we follow Riordan to his secret room where Kronin, increasingly weak and angry, awaits his doom.

            This, however, is no ordinary captor to captive relation. Sure, Riordan in many ways fits the mad scientist bill but his treatment of Kronin is almost congenial. It is, of course, in the doctor’s best interest to keep his subject temporarily alive and so brings him food and keeps him healthy, but his courtesies cannot be so easily explained. He greets him, accommodates him, offers him books to read, grants his requests to stay and chat, and…reminds him that he is as good as dead. In this sense, Riordan takes care of Kronin like a scientist cares for his lab rat. They need them healthy for when the time comes.

            Kronin may live with the thought of his death eminent but, in a weird way, Dr. Riordan respects his prisoner. Riordan is, after all, a man motivated by honor and his own backward sense of fair play. His revenge is not so much out of jealousy but out of spite for the insult on his intelligence. Even when taking offence, though, he keeps his integrity. He has nothing personally against Kronin; his wife had many other affairs before him. Kronin just had the misfortune of being the “last straw”. Even then, however, the doctor seems more eager to test the result of his perfect murder theory than vindication.

            Kronin, for his part, keeps his outbursts to a minimum. More often, he is intrigued and even impressed by his captor’s ingenuity. He even finds amusement by poking holes in the plan.

            From here Obsession builds its best scenes. Two brilliant minds challenge each other, not by force (the boy is chained and the doctor too cerebral for such brutish a resolution) but by words. Ideas are their weapons and both use talk to shake each other’s confidence until external forces pluck the mental battlefield.

            When relegated to secondary roles, movie detectives rarely become more than props used to wrap up loose ends, but Naunton Wayne’s Finsbury becomes a third player in this vile little game. Wayne, who was one of the most memorable players in Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, makes his meerschaum smoking sleuth as intelligent and tactful with his words as Riordan. He is on to the doctor long before he suspects and uses Riordan’s ego against him. American private-eyes are fond of brute force, Finsbury operates in pure English chattiness.

            Not surprisingly for a movie so in enamored with words, Riordan’s give away is a matter of linguistics. No doubt, an unmistakably British detective like Finsbury knows that no Englishman uses the phrase “thanks pal” like the doctor does lately. That becomes his biggest tip-off that Riordan has been very close to an American lately.

            Of course, it works both ways and it takes a filmmaker with some understanding of Americanisms to make it work. Obsession, blessedly, has the balanced trans-Atlantic insight of a film made by an American director in England. Edward Dmytryk worked in Hollywood for many years before making Obsession at Pinewood Studios and brings an air of authenticity even in as small a detail as the physical appearance of the Americans whom the detective hears use the phrase. They are “ethnic” looking Navy-men, probably from the East Coast. 

            Dmytryk had a number of patriotic pictures under his belt by the time WWII came to an end but that didn’t save him from the witch-hunts. When he refused to testify in 1947 he was blacklisted, his ample flag-waving during the war meaning nothing. He left Hollywood and found some work in England. Obsession was his second film of three films in Great Britain and, in many ways, one of his best. It has all the atmosphere, mood, and expert use of darkness and light, of a classic Pinewood Studios work supplemented with Americanisms that only a native would get. Unwittingly, Dmytryk may have even inspired ideas for a future international film set in England, 1956’s Around the World in Eighty Days, which also features a gentleman’s club much like this film’s Liberal Club and reunited Robert Newton with production designer Ken Adam.

            Dmytryk seems less certain about how to handle Storm Riordan (Sally Gray), virtually the film’s sole female character. He seems unsure whether to punish her for her adulterous lifestyle or justifying it through a brief line in which she tells her husband that the American loves her like he never did. However we are to take Dmytryk’s attitude toward her, it cannot be overlooked that he makes her of strong passion and then closes her story with a blubbery good-bye. At least, though, she is given some fire and pulls a fast one on her husband that contributes to the unraveling of his great plan.

            Out of misfortune there often comes a blessing. Edward Dmytryk was never a particularly outstanding director, but when he was forced to leave his homeland, he used his years productively, taking his American stylizations to England where he developed a competent understanding of British cinema, then in its heyday. Out of this circumstance was born Obsession, a top-notch thriller using some of the best cinematic techniques from both sides of the Atlantic. By 1951, Dmytryk was back in America and had agreed to testify, opening the doors to Hollywood once again, but he would never be this thoughtful, insightful, or brilliant again.