Luchino Visconti
Ossessione

"It was then that I found among my old papers the typescript French translation that Renoir had given me, of a novel by James Cain, 'The Postman Always Rings Twice.' I believe it came from an exchange between him and Duvivier. I adapted this story with my collaborators at the time, De Santis, Alicata, and Puccini. And that became the screenplay for 'Ossessione.' The fascists let it pass, but already during the filming, they caused me a thousand annoyances: they demanded to see the footage as I sent it to be developed, and when the material returned to Ferrara, I already had the order to cut certain passages. According to them, I should have cut everything. I turned a deaf ear, edited my film as I wanted, and organized a screening in Rome. It was like an explosion of dynamite in the theater: one could see a film that was not believed possible to be seen. And later 'Ossessione' experienced the greatest success, despite several interventions by the fascists: even archbishops were seen going to theaters to bless them (I don't invent anything, it is the truth). When Mussolini's last government found refuge in the north, the film was smuggled: it was cut and presented in its new version, and the negative was destroyed. The copies that currently exist are printed from a countertype that I had made."

The great director speaks and tells us about the birth and adventures of this splendid film of '43: Visconti starts from Cain's novel "The Postman Always Rings Twice" but only as a sketch, as he abandons the more detective aspects and refers to the dark romanticism and sense of fate of French cinema: he transfers to the Po plain the faded landscapes and defeated heroes of the "French poetic realism" of Renoir and M. Carné.

Let's come to the plot: Gino, an unemployed man, wonderfully played by Massimo Girotti, stops at a shop along the Po, run by the elderly Bragana and his young wife Giovanna (played by Clara Calamai, initially, the role was meant for Magnani who had to give it up because she was pregnant). The two fall in love and quickly become lovers, without the husband noticing. Gino proposes to Giovanna to leave, to go away together, but she refuses not to return to her previous squalid life, so Gino leaves for Ancona. During the journey, he befriends an artist, known as The Spaniard, who suggests he work with him. In Ancona, one day Gino meets Bragana and his wife, who came there for a singing contest. The love between Gino and Giovanna is not extinguished and the two decide to eliminate Bragana by simulating a car accident, which raises police suspicions.

After the crime, their relationship begins to crisis, and when Giovanna pockets the life insurance money for her husband, Gino feels used and leaves her for a prostitute. When Giovanna tells him she is pregnant, the two lovers reconcile and try to escape, but the car goes off the road, Giovanna dies, and Gino gets arrested.

The film impresses above all with its splendid images: at the beginning, for example, we see Gino enter the scene, get off the truck, head towards the shop (his face is hidden by a hat) that Visconti shows us with a "wonderful" camera movement. Then he enters, and the camera follows him without seeing his face, he advances to the counter, and behind a half-open curtain, a female leg sways indolently. Gino enters, turns to the woman who looks at him intensely, and finally, in a counter shot, we see the man's face: we know nothing about this protagonist (and this diverges from neorealism) but just 2 frames are enough for us to understand this encounter that will lead to a dark and fatal passion.

The theme of the film is illusion, the impossible escape into a dream, and the director expresses this in the contrast between the few bright images open on the Po or the sea in stark contrast with the general images of the film linked to murky, dark atmospheres, narrow environments dense with shadows. On one hand, the film is not realistic since Visconti was more attentive to atmospheres, intensity rather than facts, to the plot (the film does not show the facts but the before and after, the story revolves around a crime that is not seen); on the other hand, it is the start of Neorealism as it is a new film that breaks with the past of white telephones (sophisticated, exotic environments, good characters,...) and historical films full of fascist rhetoric.

The film's character is a new character, a real man, with a torn shirt and skin burnt by the sun, tired from sleeping on a truck; in this, it is real. The film does not directly attack the regime, there are no direct references but it still attacks it: all the petty supporting characters (priest, the police) represent a mentality that is fascist; splendid is the description of the squalid model of bourgeois life Bragana is the symbol of this average man of the fascist period with his machismo and paternalism. The attack on the regime is therefore expressed in the search for a different, better life: the two lovers hope to escape this condition of despair but their dream of escape ends, as always in Visconti, in defeat.

I think I made a somewhat confused review, but with a film like this, I struggle because there are so many things to say; however, I believe that the film, besides having started Neorealism (and that's no small feat), is one of the films with noir romance, never dark made in Italy.