Ossessione (1943)

User Rating:

7.9/10   

Director:

Luchino Visconti

Writers:

Luchino Visconti (scenario & dialogue) &
Mario Alicata (scenario & dialogue) ...

Release Date:

9 February 1959 (Sweden)

Genre:

Crime | Drama | Romance

Plot:

Gino, a young and handsome tramp, stops in a small roadside inn run by Giovanna. She is unsatisfied...

Plot Keywords:

Restaurant | Foreign Language Adaptation | Male Female Relationship | Gay Character | Murder

Cast

Clara Calamai	...	Giovanna Bragana
Massimo Girotti	...	Gino Costa
Dhia Cristiani	...	Anita
Elio Marcuzzo	...	Lo spagnolo
Vittorio Duse	...	L'agente di polizia
Michele Riccardini	...	Don Remigio
Juan de Landa	...	Giuseppe Bragana (as Juan De Landa)

Runtime:

140 min | Germany:104 min (cut version) | Japan:118 min (cut version) | USA:112 min (cut version) | USA:134 min (International Media print)

Country:

Italy

Language:

Italian

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

USA:TV-14 (TV rating) | Finland:K-16 (1986) | Germany:12 | Germany:18 (original rating) | Sweden:15 | Australia:PG | UK:PG

Filming Locations:

Ancona, Marche, Italy

Company:

Industrie Cinematografiche Italiane (ICI)

Trivia:

The film's negative has been destroyed by the fascists. Director Luchino Visconti managed to save a print.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Michelangelo Antonioni storia di un autore (1966) (TV)

Soundtrack:

È il sol dell'anima, la vita è amore

A haunting tale of greed and desire.

This is a haunting, powerful Italian adaptation of James M. Cain's novel The Postman Always Rings Twice directed by the great Luchino Visconti. What is so interesting about the film is that in every way it transcends it's source material to become something bolder and more original (interestingly Camus also credits Cain's novel as the key inspiration for his landmark novel The Stranger). The film has a greater power and intensity than the novel because Visconti is able to create the filmic equivalent of Cain's narrative structure but offer a more complex exploration of gender. Cain's very American novel is also uncritically fascinated with the construction of whiteness (the lead character Cora is obsessively afraid she will be identified as a Mexican and embarrassed that she married a Greek immigrant), which is not relevant to the Italian rural context that Visconti is working in. This allows the class antagonisms to take center stage and dance among the embers of the passionate, doomed love affair of the two main characters. This film is a complex, suspenseful, rewarding experience.