Ossessione

To be shown: 16 October 2006

Italy 1943
140 minutes
Director: Luchino Visconti
Starring: Clara Calamai, Massimo Girotti, Dhia Cristiani.

Synopsis

This was Visconti’s first feature film in a directorial career than spanned 33 years and it is also considered to be the first movie of the Italian Neo-Realism movement. Short-lived though this was, it influenced film-making all over the world and the Dogme 95 manifesto of Lars von Trier and his colleagues is just the most recent example of directors trying to make pictures that more accurately reflect the conditions of real life than the usual ‘Hollywood’ take on things.

The source of the plot for Ossessione was the James M. Cain novel The Postman Always Rings Twice, a work that has since been filmed twice in its native America. The first (1946) starred Lana Turner and John Garfield and the second, less successful, featured Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange (1981). The difference between Visconti’s movie and these two perfectly illustrates Neo-Realist methods.

Frequently abandoning the studio soundstage in favour of rundown outdoor locations, employing local people instead of extras, using a documentary rather than thriller style of story-telling and letting the camera show the state of mind of the characters as opposed to just stylising them, Ossessione gives us none of the artificial sophistication of the later films; they only serve to glamorise lust, greed and murder.

When the movie was released in war-time Italy, the Fascist authorities promptly banned it on the grounds that it was immoral. They later ordered that the negatives be destroyed. However, Visconti kept a print and it is from this that all subsequent copies derive. Unfortunately, this process means the film is not as crisp or well-contrasted as a copy from a negative, plus there are some signs of damage. Visconti’s troubles did not end with the overthrow of Fascism. After the war MGM objected to the unlicensed and uncredited use of Cain’s novel, since they had obtained the rights by that time and were planning the Lana Turner movie. As a result, Ossessione wasn’t distributed outside Italy until 1976.