Based on the play L’homme invisible by André De Lorde and Charles Binet and adapted by Jacques de Feraudy, Obsession is a short feature film that is part of Tourner’s final phase of activity back in France after his success in the United States. It is a story about madness that broods in the home: Raymond unjustifiably suspects that his wife Louise has cheated on him, and after trying to strangle her he is locked up in an insane asylum. His brother Pierre (the great Charles Vanel), however, needs his signature for his own business and gets him released. Once back at home, Raymond seems back to normal, but in the night he is haunted by paranoid fantasies that compel him to do the unthinkable until his son unexpectedly intervenes. Tourneur borrows the huis-clos format from theater, enclosing the story in two claustrophobic spaces: the asylum director’s office and the rooms of Raymond and Louise’s house. The unsettling atmosphere permeating their home is full at first of the wife’s anxiety and fears, exacerbated by the unawareness of the mother, who ignores the gravity of the situation. There is a powerful scene in which Louise, disturbed by the news of her husband’s imminent return, anxiously wanders in the dark living room and calls after the housekeeper who is slow to show up: the domestic space is no longer wrapped in a protective aura and is threatened by the husband, even if he is not there. Jean Yonnel (Raymond) was a Romanian actor who had performed with Sarah Bernhardt and who would be directed by Tourneur again in Koenigsmark.

Roberto Chiesi