Obsession

Clive Riordan, a wealthy London psychiatrist, learns that his wife is involved with an American. He makes no show of anger; he plans the perfect murder. He abducts the man at gunpoint and keeps him for months in a hidden room beneath a bombed out building. He visits every day, brings food, converses, and explains the plan: he will dissolve the body in an acid bath. The police search for the missing man and Riordan goes on appearing calm. Edward Dmytryk directs. Robert Newton plays Riordan. The source is Alec Coppel's novel of 1947, and he wrote the screenplay too. The story of the production is a separate matter. After refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee and standing among the Hollywood Ten, Dmytryk was blacklisted and made this film in England on a low budget. Its release was troubled as well. Because the subject resembled the crimes of John Haigh, the acid bath murderer caught in Britain at the time, the censors at first refused it a certificate and the release was delayed. The tension comes not from violence but from courtesy. Riordan never mistreats his prisoner; the two talk, and the man's death comes a little closer each day. It takes place almost entirely in two locations, and that enclosure is the film's principal instrument. Who it is for: viewers who like British noir and single location thrillers. Who it is not for: the pace is slow, little happens, and the ending resolves more gently than expected.