Obsession (1976)
Directed by Brian De Palma
A wealthy New Orleans businessman becomes obsessed with a young woman who resembles his late wife.
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What critics compared Obsession to
That gives you some idea of "Femme Fatale's" knotted heritage, and it gets worse, with homages to Hitchcock's "Rear Window" battling homages to his own "Obsession."
De Palma's borrowings were all the more irritating when it became clear that much of his supposed fealty to the master came less from his soul than from his big production budgets, which enabled him to hire Bernard Herrmann for Sisters and Obsession -- though all he wanted Herrmann to do was imitate his scores for Vertigo and Psycho.
De Palma made a series of derivative but richly entertaining noirs in the '70s and early '80s -- "Obsession," "Dressed to Kill," "Blow Out" -- and "Femme Fatale," arriving in the wake of two stinkers, "Snake Eyes" and "Mission to Mars," is an optimistic return to that vein.
Noted for his inventive cinematic style in such films as Obsession, Body Double, The Untouchables, and Carrie, De Palma succeeds in giving Femme Fatale the exciting look and feel of a thriller.
Code adds those themes to an action-film frame: Working with editor Paul Hirsch (who cut some of Brian De Palma’s finest suspense scenes in films like Obsession and Blow Out, which also addressed doggedly retracing one’s steps), Jones compacts a movie’s worth of fury, frustration and fear into the first five minutes.
Although his " Scarface " was more of a serious social commentary, thrilling suspense movies are his specialty, and his credits include " Carrie ," " Obsession ," and " Dressed to Kill ."
This time out, he most explicitly references a trio of Hitch�s films (Vertigo, Rear Window, and Psycho) that he had previously paid extensive tribute to with better end results (most notably in Obsession, Sisters, Dressed to Kill).
His work so far includes The Yakuza (A Japanese style gangster film), Taxi Driver (a grim portrait of an alienated individual), Obsession (a psychological thriller), and Blue Collar (a realistic portrait of some disaffected workers who revolt against their condition).
Schrader tackled Middle American dilemmas with eloquence in the radical Blue Collar, and he had touched on incest and child sexuality in scripts like Obsession and Taxi Driver.