Obsession Recap

[Paulette Dzurilla]

Asa Person of Criterion Experience, I don\u2019t \u201Cwatch movies.\u201D I engage with cinema. Only the finest cuts of meat satisfy my refined palate for motion pictures. There\u2019s nothing like donning my velvet robe, swirling a glass of Merlot, firing off an abusive tweet to Dr. Mehmet Oz, and browsing the offerings on the Criterion Channel\u2019s homepage.

It was during one of my hundreds of international flights to exotic and sexual locations that I came across the film Magnificent Obsession (1954) starring Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman on the Criterion for iPad app. It\u2019s been around a year since I first watched it, and this movie still occupies an apartment in my mind. Consider this post my attempt at evicting it.

So here it is, my recap, summary, and review of Magnificent Obsession (1954), written from memory because I absolutely don\u2019t want to watch it again. All inaccuracies are in service of conveying a general vibe.

Directed by Douglas Sirk, Magnificent Obsession (1954) tells the story of a wealthy, arrogant playboy who accidentally kills some lady\u2019s husband, joins a cult that causes him to fall in love with that same lady, pushes her into oncoming traffic by being a creep, and then does surgery on her with his new cult powers. It\u2019s a bit more complicated than that, but we\u2019ll get into it.

Let\u2019s back up a smidge. Hudson plays Robert Merrick. He\u2019s got the women, the cash, and the jet ski which he immediately crashes into a dock within seconds of the film\u2019s opening. The only thing that can save him is this box (a \u201Cresuscitator,\u201D but it\u2019s a box in the movie) located in the home of one Dr. Phillip, who lives across the lake. The rescuers take the box from Dr. Phillip\u2019s house, who coincidentally has a heart attack and dies.

Robert wakes up from his coma. Not to worry, he\u2019s still hot and his near-death accident hasn\u2019t left a scratch on him, which is good news for us, the viewers. Everyone in this hospital is super mad at Robert, and he\u2019s not sure why. But it\u2019s okay because no one really likes him in general, and he doesn\u2019t necessarily see the poors as \u201Cpeople.\u201D He escapes his room and hitches a ride with a kind woman, Helen, played by Jane Wyman. Little do they know, fate has extremely silly plans in store for them.

While chatting with Helen (MILF), our spoiled rich boy learns the terrible truth: The box they used to bring him back to life was taken from the home of her husband, Dr. Phillip, at the exact moment he suffered a heart attack. I wonder what selfish idiot was hogging the box while her husband was dying. Well, who knows, and anyway she was just heading to her dead husband\u2019s hospital now.

Robert hits her with the \u201Cdamn that\u2019s brazy\u201D and dips. Helen gets to the hospital to settle her super dead husband\u2019s affairs, like charging his sick patients for the remainder of their bills, but it turns out none of his patients owe them money. All their debts were paid off by some mysterious person. No, it\u2019s not the millionaire. Don\u2019t worry about it for now. \u201CWild,\u201D says Helen.

Meanwhile, as it turns out, Robert does have a conscience because he\u2019s really sad that he took the box from Dr. Phillip, thus murdering him. He drinks his sadness away and gets into a car accident, crashing into the home of Edward Randolph, a successful artist and friend of the deceased Dr. Phillip. He\u2019s super chill about a drunk driver plowing a car into his home, because he\u2019s low-key in a cult that really zens him out.

\u201COh, my cult?\u201D Edward Randolph says, whimsically. \u201CHave you ever seen a lamp? When you pull the chain, the light comes on, right? But no one knows where the light comes from.\u201D (Not how electricity works, but go off, king.) \u201CKindness is like that. We are lamps and kindness is the mysterious unknown energy that lights us up. I\u2019m an artist, not an engineer, by the way.\u201D

\u201CNo,\u201D Edward Randolph says. \u201CDon\u2019t be gay. Acts of kindness are the key to psychic abilities. When you do something good for a complete stranger without any expectation of a reward, this actually makes a ripple in the fabric of the universe, which sends energy waves across reality. You can absorb those waves and become a demigod with fame and bitches.\u201D

It should be mentioned that Dr. Phillip was also in this cult, and this is why all his patients didn\u2019t owe him any money. He wasn\u2019t charging them, which is no way to run a business in these, our United States. But I digress. Helen is left with no money because of this, by the way. Flop.

Right. First order of business to turn on Robert\u2019s lamp is to hunt down Helen Phillips and do something nice for her. That\u2019s nowhere near what the instructions were, but boys will be boys. He finds Helen at a fancy outdoor lunch and attempts violent, aggressive kindness with her, but unfortunately for him, Helen has since learned that Robert was the one who intentionally and maliciously killed her husband by taking his favorite box out of the house.

\u201CNo, Mr. Robert, I should think I won\u2019t be seeing you tonight,\u201D she says in that old Hollywood accent, or however movie stars talked back then. She gets up in a huff and marches out onto the street and is hit by a car and blinded. :(

Everyone is really mad at our boy Robert now, because he killed Dr. Phillips then blinded his surviving wife. Who does he think he is, really, to be doing all that? Robert realizes his problem was that he wasn\u2019t doing kindness hard enough, which is difficult to believe considering he did kindness so hard it literally and permanently disabled someone, but that\u2019s where his head goes regardless.

He recommits to the lamp cult and starts studying to be a doctor while keeping a close eye on Helen. Somehow this film doesn\u2019t become a horror movie at this point. It\u2019s still doing wet, sappy melodrama because this is a film for silly geese and by silly geese. He watches Helen on the beach, who looks like this now. Very obviously blind, as you can tell by the sunglasses.

Under the alias \u201CRobby\u201D (nice, well done), Robert pretends to be a broke medical student without altering his voice whatsoever and successfully romances Helen by reading her the funnies. She has no idea, meanwhile, that he\u2019s the one who has brought all this suffering to her life. The blindness is new, but the goofiness is not.

Robert continues this weirdo behavior while simultaneously using his rich-person connections to find a doctor who can restore Helen\u2019s eyesight. At last, he finds a group of doctors in Switzerland who are willing to experiment on her. Success! Just as the lamp said would happen.

Helen flies to Switzerland where the doctors are sad to say ze melodrama is inoperable. Helen is sad, of course, but who has come all the way to see her? Robby, of course! That beloved broke medical student who sounds a little like the man who chased her into traffic. How wonderful that he was able to quickly book an international flight in the \u201850s when people were still riding chariots pulled by pigeons to fly.

Robby decides to treat Helen to the best night of her life by going out in a Swiss village where the townsfolk are busy dancing and burning a witch to death in the town square. \u201CCan you feel the flames?\u201D Robby asks. \u201CIsn\u2019t it lovely?\u201D

Sure, she\u2019s on a date with her personal angel of death and the guy who\u2019s been stalking her for most of the film, but all in all she\u2019s having a good time. Dating is hard and it\u2019s valid to settle for the question mark who reads you funnies on the beach.

\u201CI do need to tell you that I\u2019m not Robby, but Robert, the man you might know as the guy who killed your husband and snatched the sight from your sockets like the Grinch stole Christmas,\u201D says Rob, the absolute dude.

So, he does, and meanwhile he gets really good at doing surgery on people. I\u2019m all but certain you know what\u2019s coming, but I\u2019ll spell it out anyway: He finally finds Helen in some remote mountain town where she is dying of terminal corniness that has spread from her eyes into her brain.

\u201COh, hello,\u201D the resident doctor says upon seeing Robert. \u201CI\u2019m pretty ugly and useless, so I don\u2019t think I can save her. It would be a different story if someone around here was hot and capable. We had a brilliant surgeon you\u2019ve never heard of before who worked here, but he\u2019s dead now.\u201D

Magnificent Obsession is a landmark film that bridged the two great American pastimes: being weird to women and insensitive to the blind. It\u2019s important that we judge it within its historical context. No one back then could have possibly known Rock Hudson was gay. Though not a perfect film, it would go on to influence pop culture well into the present day, providing the inspiration for the Uchiha clan in Naruto.

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