(RARE) Ossessione
(RARE) Ossessione
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Synopsis

One of the great revelations of the cinema is Luchino Visconti's adaptation of James M. Cain''s The Postman Always Rings Twice, about the tragic love between a wanderer and the wife of an innkeeper, who conspire to murder her husband. Unavailable for years in the U.S., the film had a profound influence on the course of the cinema. Open City usually gets the credit, but man y scholars consider this the film the real harbinger of the great era of Italia n neo-realism. A masterpiece. In Italian with English subtitles. Luchino Visconti---Italy---1942---142 mins.

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  • Currently 3/5 Stars.
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   | Lewis#4

With this 1943 film Luchino Visconti makes his directorial debut and gets in on the dusty ground floor of the short-lived Italian neorealist movement. (His “Rocco and his Brothers” of 1960 can be seen perhaps as its last hurrah.) The story here is as earthy as they come. The characters are unheroic, unglamorous, mired in poverty, and prey to base emotions. If the film can be said to have an operatic sensibility--“operatic" is a common characterization of Visconti--it is a sensibility that derives not from Verdi, but from the later verismo composers. The drifter Gino (Massimo Girotti) finds himself at a roadside taverna run by the simple Giuseppe (Juan de Landa) and his restless young wife Giovanna (Clara Calamai). As Gino's sexual encounter with Giovanna turns into the obsession of the title, it becomes apparent that the husband has to be eliminated. Sound familiar? The source is obviously James M. Caine’s The Postman Always Rings Twice, though this hard-edged novel, the source of American noir and neo-noir classics, does not appear in the credits of this film, made in war-torn, fascist Italy. This is a compelling, well-made motion picture, where every camera placement is precisely calculated, even if the camera is trained on characters who are not always so engaging. It is also, as the work of a man born to the privileges of the Italian aristocracy, a startling debut.

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  • Currently 4/5 Stars.
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   | Hedges#1

James Cain's THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE by any other language is still a winner. Excellent Visconti filmmaking debut, with great location work, solid acting by the leads.

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