What’s the difference between a neo noir and a giallo? No, really, I want to know. Because in America, this even had a yellow poster and in Italy, it was called Compless di Colpa (Guilt Complex), which sure sounds like either a Hitchcock or giallo title.

Well, this is maybe more of the Hitchcock side of the equation, as this film takes the central theme from Vertigo while also have a score by Bernard Hermann.

Paul Schrader’s script was extensively rewritten and pared down by De Palma before shooting, which didn’t go over well with the writer. Yet that Hitchcock idea — a businessman is haunted by his dead wife before he falls for a young woman who looks exactly like her — remains. De Palma said, “Paul Schrader’s ending actually went on for another act of obsession. I felt it was much too complicated, and wouldn’t sustain, so I abbreviated it.” Herrmann agreed, telling the director that the script would never work. But Schrader’s idea of the movie going the whole way until another ten years past its conclusion — as he said, “an obsessive love where transcended the normal strictures of time” — as something he couldn’t bear to lose. It led to a rift between the two that las for years.

Michael Courtland (Cliff Robertson) is that businessman, a successful real estate developer whose wife Elizabeth (Geneviève Bujold) and daughter Amy (Wanda Blackman) are kidnapped and held for ransom. The police recommend that he give them paper instead of the cash, but the hand-off ends with a car chase and the kidnappers and his family killed in an explosion. Blaming himself for listening to the police, Courtand sinks into depression.

16 years later, he’s so obsessed by the loss that he’s even built a monument in America to the place where he first met Elizabeth, the Basilica di San Miniato al Monte. His business partner Robert Lasalle (John Lithgow) thinks he should get away and so they go to Florence, the original site of this building, and while there, Michael meets Sandra Portinari, a woman who looks exactly like his wife (and is also played by Geneviève Bujold). Of course, Courtland falls for her and works to transform her into the living version of his dead wife, even taking her home to be his new bride.

Of course, she gets kidnapped on their wedding night. The same ransom note from before sends Michael over the edge he’s already on. And once he learns the truth, well…everything gets very, very bloody. You kind of need to see it for yourself, because it’s pretty astounding — and very giallo — what the actual truth is.

The best review of this came from Roger Ebert, who said “Sometimes overwrought excess can be its own reward. If Obsession had been even a little more subtle, had made even a little more sense on some boring logical plane, it wouldn’t have worked at all.”

De Palma believes that Cliff Robertson was the biggest issue with this film. Sure, it was a success, but he sees the flaws because of the actor. He believes that Robertson would deliberately deliver a poor performance and line readings when shooting opposite Bujold. The actor also insisted on a dark tanning makeup, which seems wildly inappropriate for his role. It made lighting him so difficult that at one point cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond shoved him against a wood wall and screamed, “You! You are the same color as this wall!”

Speaking of obsession, Herrmann became infatuated with Bujold as he scored the film. She made a surprise visit to the recording sessions and Herrmann’s friend Charles Gerhardt remembers, “As she spoke to Benny in a heavy French accent I could tell he was about to get the hanky out. She told him of all the trouble she’d had with Cliff Robertson because he spent all his time in makeup and didn’t make their love scenes meaningful. She said, “Mr. Herrmann, he wouldn’t make love to me — but you made love to me with your music.” And Benny started to cry. He would tell that story over and over at dinner, and start crying again every time.”

Hermann died five months later — he was to score Carrie but didn’t live long enough — and his widow found a photo of Bujold in his wallet.