Obsession (1976)

In 1959 New Orleans, when his wife (Genevieve Bujold) and daughter (Wanda Blackman) are kidnapped and held for a $500,000 ransom, a successful land developer (Cliff Robertson) calls in the police. But everything goes wrong and the wife and daughter are killed along with the kidnappers for which he can never forgive himself. Jump 16 years later to Florence, Italy where he walks into a church and sees a young Italian girl (Genevieve Bujold) who is a dead ringer for his dead wife! Using Hitchcock's masterpiece VERTIGO as a template, director Brian De Palma deliberately and intricately usurps VERTIGO's focus on obsession and how it destroys the very thing you treasure and turns into his own darkly romantic web of obsession. I've seen the film several times since its original 1976 release and each time, I swear it gets better. Two reasons that push the film's attributes to a higher plateau: Bujold's superb performance, perhaps her best, which one appreciates even more the second time around and Bernard Herrmann's stunning Oscar nominated score, one of his very best. With John Lithgow, Sylvia Kuumba Williams and J. Patrick McNamara.