The Movie Book (Big Ideas Simply Explained) (2016)

IN CONTEXT

GENRE

Film noir, romance

DIRECTOR

Luchino Visconti

WRITERS

Luchino Visconti, Mario Alicata, Guiseppe De Santis, Gianni Puccini (screenplay); James M. Cain (novel)

STARS

Clara Calamai, Massimo Girotti, Juan de Landa

BEFORE

1935 Visconti’s movie career begins as an assistant director on Jean Renoir’s drama Toni.

AFTER

1946 Tay Garnett’s The Postman Always Rings Twice is the first US adaptation of the novel. It stars Lana Turner and John Garfield.

1981 The second US version stars Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange.

On its release in Italy, Luchino Visconti’s debut as director had to contend with the disapproval of the Fascist regime. It was beset by copyright problems, too, yet his unauthorized adaptation of James M. Cain’s 1934 crime novel The Postman Always Rings Twice has endured as well as the later Hollywood versions.

"A movie that stinks of latrines."

Gaetano Polverelli
Mussolini’s Culture Minister

A study of jealousy

Although Visconti would become known for the lush, baroque, and melodramatic style of later movies such as Senso (1954), Ossessione reflects his training as an assistant to French director Jean Renoir, who first gave him Cain’s book. It has been heralded as the first of the Italian neorealist movies, shot in the torrid flatlands of the Po delta in order to capture the texture of everyday life.

While Ossessione is nominally a crime yarn, Visconti plays those elements down, creating a story about desperation and jealousy. Both main characters are stuck: one in a marriage, another on the road. Neither of the protagonists is a straightforward hero or heroine. The drifter Gino (Massimo Girotti) is filthy and broke, and the beautiful, put-upon Giovanna (Clara Calamai), married to slovenly restaurant owner Giuseppe (Juan de Landa), is never allowed the trappings of the femme fatale. In Visconti’s eyes, Giovanna is no temptress, and Gino no villain; it is the oppression of capitalism that leads the working class astray. It was this view that offended the Fascists, leading the censor to butcher the master copy. Happily, Visconti kept a secret print.

What else to watch: The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) ✵ The Bicycle Thief (1948) ✵ The Leopard (1963) ✵ Death in Venice (1971)