Details
Movie Description
Rock Hudson bursts through the screen as reckless playboy Bob Merrick in Douglas Sirk's MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION. He creams across a lake at 150 miles per hour in a brightly painted speedboat. Merrick's haughty indulgence sets off a fantastically spectacular chain of tragic events that will transform him and all of those around him. When the speedboat jaunt ends in an accident, Merrick must be resuscitated using the town's only life-saving mechanism, and as a consequence, leaving the saintly local surgeon, Dr. Philips, to die of a heart attack at his stately villa across the lake. When Merrick learns of his part in the doctor's death, he makes a half-hearted attempt to square things with the devastated widow, Helen (Jane Wyman). However, his careless ham-fisted apologies accidentally cause an accident that leaves Helen completely blind. Under the sure, visionary hand of master melodramatist Sirk, these sprawling, high-pitched coincidences congeal to create a stunning window into the morals and mysteries of the American family and value system. Merrick's trail towards redemption by way of a mysterious brand of Christian philanthropy engenders the "Magnificent Obsession" of the title, as he embarks on a desperate study of medicine in order to cure Helen's blindness and hopefully atone for a life's worth of sins.
Synopsis
Playboy Bob Merrick has, through his carelessness and reckless bravado, created heartbreak and tragedy for Helen Phillips. Not only is he responsible for her husband's death but for Helen's blindness as well. Eaten up by guilt, Merrick decides to become a surgeon and devote his life to helping others. But more than anything he'd like to make it up to Helen... by one day restoring her sight.
Industry Reviews
"[A]droitly constructed, with committed performances by the two stars, and gorgeous, shadowy cinematography..." -- Grade: B+
Entertainment Weekly - Tim Purtell (01/16/2009)
"MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION was the first of Sirk's big-budget, Technicolor melodramas for Universal, but he was already working with distancing devices -- action reflected in mirrors or hard surfaces; colors so bright that they seem to detach themselves from the physical world...."
New York Times - Dave Kehr (01/19/2008)
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