Obsession

Obsession (1949) is a British crime thriller you can watch online on iFILM — directed by Edward Dmytryk and built around a man who has decided to take his time. Robert Newton plays a psychiatrist whose wife has been unfaithful once too often. He does not argue. He locks her lover in a basement and begins to wait.

Phil Brown plays the captive, visited once a day. In an adjoining room a bathtub fills, slowly, with sulfuric acid. Sally Gray is the wife, caught between two men — and unsure which one is more dangerous.

Dmytryk made this in Britain shortly before the Hollywood blacklist closed in on him. The film's stillness suits that period: a controlled man in a controlled situation, with one inevitable outcome. Stream Obsession (1949) online on iFILM.