Obsession attitudinizes in three directions: toward the Hitchcockian thriller, toward the old-fashioned tearjerker, and toward the sophisticated European film, with cultural references strewn like bread crumbs along the way of Hansel and Gretel.

Such a mishmash could be endearing; as it happens, it is neither mish nor mash so much as mush….

[Paul] Schrader and De Palma have loaded their penny dreadful with allusions high and low. There are overtones of The Winter's Tale, the Bluebeard story, Rebecca, and, of course, Vertigo. There are quotations from Dante's Vita nuova, likewise a tale of loving obsession. And there is more: The fresco with whose restoration Sandra assists is by Bernardo Daddi; it is a Virgin and Child, whose damaging has revealed an earlier work underneath—which one of them is to be sacrificed for the other? Why such fuss over a lesser master like Daddi, for whom Sandra and the restorers finally opt? Because Sandra's heart, however ironically and ferally, belongs to Daddy. And why the Virgin and Child? Because love between child and mother is what really motivates Sandra. And why is it the earlier work that is sacrificed? An anterior life must be abandoned both by Michael and Sandra for the sake of a vita nuova.

The movie is full of such otiose allusiveness and gamesmanship. Sandra's last name is Portinari—after Dante's Beatrice, of course. A minor character, said to be a bore, is called D'Annunzio after you know whom; another one is called Farber, although I can't say whether after [film critics] Manny or Stephen. The place where Michael doesn't quite dare accost Sandra is the Ponte Vecchio, where Beatrice withheld her greeting from Dante. Since a suitcase figures prominently in several Hitchcock films, photography, editing, and music combine to pump ominousness into the stairs of San Miniato, even though they have no dramatic function whatsoever. The first part of the film takes place in 1958—the date of Vertigo. The score was finished, just before he died, by Bernard Herrmann—the composer of Vertigo. And so on.

All this would be mere harmless minor nonsense if the plot as a whole weren't such a major piece of arrant absurdity. Sandra's behavior is a priori incredible, and it's only because we don't know till later who she is that we swallow the preposterousness that surrounds her….

Countless details are fudged over in one way or another; if all else fails, there is always manic editing. Most incredible, though, is that the real villain should, with all his verve, choose so slow and risky a method of skullduggery as he does, and that the bright and decent Sandra should be so manipulable and obtuse. Toward the end, the behavior of all the characters becomes even less explicable, and the last slender links to sanity, indeed humanity, are frenetically severed.

De Palma's direction has its splashy slickness, but the people serve as mere props for the effects. The director was best at low-budget jobs like Greetings and Hi, Mom; considerably less good with medium-priced items such as Sisters and Phantom of the Paradise; and, if this is any indication, untrustworthy with bigger budgets. (p. 60)