Obsession

TCM is keeping me awake all the time... they keep coming up with films Ive never heard of ... Senso.... now Ossessione... a very early film by Visconti!!... wow... the Italian version of The Postman Always Rings Twice...brilliant!! beautifully acted and directed ...Never heard of either leads who were excellent, Clara Calamai,as Giovanna, and especially, Massimo Girotti as Gino... what a sensual man !! more muscular and attractive than anyone else on the screen in 1943!!! His look was ahead of its time...many male stars from the 1950s were probably inspired by him... he should have been a major world wide star!! The film is much better than the Jack Nicholson/Jessica Lange version and less glossier than the MGM version (which I really like) with John Garfield and Lana Turner remember that white outfit ? who can forget.... This Italian version is different ..more realistic and with a very different ending... see it watch it...Im going to buy it !!

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.

Visconti's first feature, Ossessione is an adaptation of James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice. Now, I'm not familiar with that book or the other film versions, but I am a big fan of Cain's Double Indemnity (much more so than I am a fan of Billy Wilder's film version of it, in fact). The two novellas seem like they must be very similar. Both involve an illicit love affair where a ravenous wife complains to a morally weak man that her husband is worthless and mean to her. Giovanna, the woman in this Italian version, played very well by Clara Calamai, is not evil incarnate like the wife in Double Indemnity, but she seems very spoiled. Her husband (a great performance by Juan de Landa) is a bit cruel to her, but she strikes me like she is at least as uncompromising with him. He's older than her and unattractive, so she's rather fickle. When Gino shows up, a young, muscular man, it takes her about five minutes to get him into bed. She sweats she wants to be with him forever, but she's stuck with her husband. They break up at first, but when they meet again, they (apparently, although this is intentionally vague) plan to murder the husband. They are successful, and they move back to the woman's home town to run the bar that her husband owned. Gino is very unenthusiastic about this idea. He wants Giovanna, but the one thing that he certainly doesn't want is to sit around in one place for the rest of his life. Their relationship quickly crumbles. Ossessione is a very complex film with complex characters. It's always fascinating, but it does go on a bit too long. At two hours and twenty-two minutes, I can't, for the life of me, figure out how it took that long! This is partly due to the neorealist stylistics that Visconti was inventing within this film. It was, after all, the first film that won that label. We see a lot of the action prolonged as it would be in real life, without any hurrying to the next plot point. I've seen many of Visconti's films, and the only one I like better than this one is Rocco and His Brothers (1960). His direction is as great as it ever was, with the camera moving brilliantly and the editing perfect. I also feel the need to point out the film's best performance, by Dhia Christiani as a young (exotic) dancer and part-time prostitute named Anita whom Gino meets after he begins to try to break away from Giovanna. She's only in the film for maybe five or six minutes, and she has only a few lines. It's shocking how much Visconti and Christiani are able to do with this character in such a short time. She's absolutely heartbreaking. 9/10.

Wow! The sort of movie you could watch ten times and still delight in its nuances. Absolutely incredible! If this was Visconti's debut film, i shudder to think what would happen if he got any better from film to film. The only other one of his i've seen (at time of writing) is Death in Venice - which was absolutely incredible: more dazzling visually than Ossessione (Obsession). One of the most beautiful films i've ever seen, but its story was not as involving as Ossessione. If you click on "miscellaneous" on this page's links, there are stills from the movie on those websites. They won't really do justice to the experience of the movie: such graceful camera movements, such beautiful composition, such wonderful faces, such terrific characters, such a great story development, the first movie adapted from James M Cain's "The Postman Always Rings Twice."

I can't believe this was made in 43, eight years before Brando was supposed to have introduced realistic acting to the world with Streetcar Named Desire (1951). The actors in this may not have used the method technique, ie they may not have truly felt everything themselves (i don't know anything about it) - but they're some of the best, most genuine and realistic performances up to this date in cinema. Also, eight years before Streetcar Named Desire brought a new sensuality to the screen, Ossessione was electrifyingly sensual! The most sensual thing since the beginning of cinema! Yes, i'm being superlative, but Ossessione was just that terrific.

The reason Ossessione didn't cause the impact Streetcar did was that it was made in fascist Italy and banned by Mussolini, and re-cut in America. American audiences didn't see its full glory till 59, eight years AFTER Streetcar.

I won't say any more about it - just writing to tell you its one of the best, most beautiful and exciting movies i've ever seen, and tell you to go out and see it! Like another reviewer, i'm going to buy it as soon as i can find it!

fascinating look at fascist italy and the people who carved out a life under mussolini. street scenes and lifestyle glimpses alone are worth watching. combine this with a masterful plot and premier acting and you get a film that you will want to watch again . .. and maybe again.