# Obsession (1949 film)

Obsession, released in the United States as The Hidden Room, is a 1949 British crime film directed by Edward Dmytryk. It is based on the 1947 novel A Man About a Dog by Alec Coppel, who also wrote the screenplay for the film. Obsession was entered into the 1949 Cannes Film Festival.

## Plot

Clive Riordan, a wealthy London psychiatrist, learns that his wife Storm is romantically involved with Bill Kronin, an American. He resolves to exact revenge on both by committing the perfect murder of Kronin.
After kidnapping Kronin at gunpoint, Riordan keeps him prisoner for months in a hidden room accessed from a nearby garage while authorities mount a search for the missing American. During one of his daily visits to bring food and supplies, Riordan is unknowingly trailed by his dog Monty. Fearing that Monty might lead others to the secret location, Riordan resolves to keep the dog with Kronin. The doctor reveals to Kronin that he plans to kill him and dissolve his corpse in an acid bath.
Riordan's plan appears to be succeeding until Superintendent Finsbury from Scotland Yard visits the doctor's office. Finsbury claims to be investigating the missing dog, but as the conversation drifts to the Kronin case it becomes clear that Finsbury harbors suspicions about Riordan.
Feeling the noose tightening, Riordan decides it’s time to act and poisons Kronin, only to discover that he has trained Monty to empty the acid bath by pulling the plug chain. The police find Riordan’s car in the garage, which leads them to the hidden room and Kronin’s body. Realizing his plan has failed, Riordan resigns himself to his fate. Finsbury arrives to arrest him, revealing that Kronin survived and that Riordan has escaped a charge of murder.

## Cast

* Robert Newton as Dr. Clive Riordan
* Sally Gray as Storm Riordan
* Phil Brown as Bill Kronin
* Naunton Wayne as Superintendent Finsbury
* James Harcourt as Aitkin (butler)
* Ronald Adam as clubman
* Allan Jeayes as clubman
* Olga Lindo as Mrs Humphries
* Russell Waters as Flying Squad detective
* Sam Kydd as club steward

## Background

Alec Coppel wrote the story as a play when he was living in Sydney during World War II. He adapted it into a novel while travelling to London. Coppel titled the play and the novel A Man About a Dog, but in the United States, the novel was titled Over the Line.
The play opened in London in April 1946 and the novel was published in 1948, although many critics commented that the novel felt similar to a play. Another production of the play was staged in London in May 1949.

## Production

Film rights were acquired by the British producer Noel Madison. He also bought the rights to two other thrillers, Four Hours to Kill by Norman Krasna and The Last Mile by John Wexley.
The film's director Edward Dmytryk, had recently left Hollywood following his appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He travelled to England in mid-1948 and was granted a work permit by the Ministry of Labour under the foreign directors' quota agreement between producers and the film industry's trade unions. He signed a contract to direct the film with Nat Bronstein of Independent Sovereign Films on 1 October 1948.
Filming took place near Grosvenor House and Coppel's home, which was converted into a temporary dressing room.
Dmytryk went over the script with Coppel at a hotel at Lake Annecy. He later said Bronstein wanted a part in the film for his opera singing girlfriend, Marushka, and the producer was upset when one could not be found.
Dmytryk says Robert Newton had to place a £20,000 bond guaranteeing his sobriety during production which went for 30 days. The director says Newton only started drinking on the last day of filming.
The plot involves disposing a body by dissolving it in acid. Because this appeared to have similarities to the case of the murderer John Haigh, the British Board of Film Censors initially refused to grant the film a certificate and its release was delayed.

## Reception

Dymytryk later wrote the film "was eventually released to good reviews and decent box-office returns. But it was seven months before the film was in the bag, and in those seven months, Jean and I learned how to triumph over adversity—at least temporarily—kept afloat by a weird mixture of grief and happiness, of love and anxiety, but never hope. Still, it was a period of small victories that permits us to remember it with a certain nostalgia, and when compared to the year and a half that followed, it was a picnic."

### Critical

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Alec Coppel's story, though ingenious, is rather thin and more suited to the theatre than to the cinema: although the director, Edward Dmytryk, does all that he can to subdue its theatricalities and achieves a very expert and fluent piece of film-making, Obsession remains a very lightweight melodrama, well worth watching for its technique but of minor intrinsic interest. The acting is variable: Robert Newton, though less mannered than usual, does not really convey Riordan's frightening obsession, Sally Gray is just adequate as his wife, Naunton Wayne excellent as the police Superintendent and Phil Brown (Kronin) gives the most striking performance."
Variety wrote that the film is slow-paced at first but becomes suspenseful.
The New York Times called it "a first-rate study in suspense and abnormal psychology."
In 1993, Kendal Patterson of the Los Angeles Times described the film as an early predecessor of Fatal Attraction.