This is the first film in a three-part season at the Horse Hospital, curated by Duncan Carson, called Blitzed: A Season about British men, masculinity and the 1950s. You can find the details about all three of the the films via the page on the Horse Hospital website here.
Here is Duncan's introduction to the season and a note on tonight's film:
It's tempting to look at British cinema of the 1950s as waiting for something more exciting to come by. But before the Angry Young Men stormed the old guard, repression was creating something equally interesting, if you knew where to look. Contrary to what the view from 2017 might tell you, post-War Britain was a grim place. The end of the war brought the end of Empire, twelve more years of rationing, and a series of humilations that put Britain's unique self-regard to the test. And that's without taking into account the readjustment of a generation of men ill equipped to deal with the emotional scars of war, and with a homefront effort that challenged the enduring patriarchy. British cinema did its best to hide these issues, but plenty crept in.
This series is designed as a primer to knowing what to spot in British cinema in the 1950s. In Obsession you have noir master Edward Dmytryk – on the Hollywood Blacklist and exiled from the US – dealing with a story of adultery, but one that has almost nothing to do with his wife and everything to do with the man who has done the dirty on him. It's no coincidence that the man is an American, with the embarrassment of country's fortunes drawing so heavily on US reserves. Making great use of the Blitzed city as a space for unruly behaviour, this ripe, Hitchcock-esque film is a blackly comic delight.
Here (and above) are extracts from the film.
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