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Sorry, this movie sucks

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

'Ossessione' was great Italian filmmaker Luchino Visconti's debut film. 'Ossessione' is based on James M. Cain's novel 'The Postman Always Rings Twice'.The aforementioned novel has been adapted quite a few times in America. But I think Visconti's film succeeds in properly portraying the struggles of the characters in a very believable manner. This film actually elevates the subject matter of the book to some extent. While the book was all about the theme 'crime doesn't pay', the film adds a touch of humanity to the theme to make the film very moving.Is the film sexy and erotic? Certainly. It has all the titillating aspects of the original source material as Massimo Girotti and Clara Calamai crank up the heat. But apart from the eroticism, the film also brilliantly explores the characters. We understand the hesitations, the temptations, the motivations and the grief of both Giovanna and Gino. Visconti does a great job of setting the storyline in Italy. This allowed Visconti to place the socio- economic problems of wartime Italy in the background of the story. The financial inadequacy plays a big role in justifying the motivations of the characters.The film is certainly a morality tale too. It is concerned with the temptation to indulge in criminal activities and how such choices more often than not lead to catastrophe. However, Visconti doesn't judge or vilify any character. He treats them with respect and doesn't take their humanity away from them. From a technical standpoint, I was impressed by the shot selection of Visconti and the way he composed his frames. There are some breathtaking moments that stand out like the shot in the initial part of the film where the camera after tracking sideways suddenly rises(via a crane) above the truck to shift the focus from Bragana to Gino to show us whom this film would follow, or the shot of Giovanna verbalising her past struggles to Gino while sitting on a chair in a painfully hunched posture, or the beautiful sequence where Giovanna hints at the favour that she wants Gino to do for her and her love which almost plays out like a choreographed dance sequence as she moves around with Gino following behind her in the room,etc. Visconti's movement of the camera already seemed very assured for his debut film.The acting in the film is outstanding. Massimo Girotti has a strong masculine presence. But he also has the range to shift from a confident man to being a man riddled with guilt. Calamai also gives a very layered performance. One can easily see the pain and insecurity in her eyes.'Ossessione' is sometimes regarded as the first Italian neo-realist film. Now that is something that can be questioned, but in my mind what can't be questioned is the depth and layers that Visconti adds to the film which could have easily been reduced to a pulp crime thriller. He makes the film socially poignant. Highly Recommended.

My third VIsconti film. I don't think I would watch another one of his films in the near future.I prefer the American version of Cain's novel. That was a lot more dynamic and entertaining.Parts of Ossessione were overtly dramatic. The use of background score was very jarring at times. The many scenes of brutal realism were too long and boring. Visconti uses long shots for the desolate Italian countryside. I wasn't all that impressed by the "animal lust" (according to some reviewers) portrayed by the two characters .But if I was asked to list the positives, the performances were excellent. The characterization was fantastic - two tortured souls unable to find pleasure or happiness in any sort of environment. This aspect of the characters is foregrounded just after their first love making session when the female lets it out that she is never going to leave this place because it would mean more dinner invitations from strange men.An air of despair and forlornness hangs over every frame(especially towards the end). Visconti lays it on thick that these are doomed characters.The war-time Italy in this film is in direct contrast to the prosperous post-war one in Dino Risi's Il Sorpasso (1962). Both films had somewhat similar endings.i think its time for a temporary divorce between Visconti and me.(6/10)

First thing to bear in mind is that it is the second version of Cain 's "Postman always rings twice" .The first version was French and made in 1939 by Pierre Chenal with satisfying -but not outstanding -results.Two American Versions were to follow Visconti's ,Tay Garnett's film starring John Garfield and Lana Turner being the best of the two ,in spite of Jack Nicholson's and Jessica Lange's talent.Luchino Visconti's "ossessione" beats them all.It features the best tramp,Massimo Girotti ,although John Garfield is a close second.Unlike the three other movies,it's not really a thriller,it's rather a psychological drama where James Cain's story often sounds as if it had been rewritten by Patricia Highsmith -which the presence of the gay Spanish man reinforces-.The lack of of picturesque in the depiction of Italian life predates Neorealism which officially began just after the war.Unlike Chenal's and Garnett's works ,you will not find here any suspense:the "accident" does not interest the director at all;nor the investigation.The movie deals with Gino's obsession :first his desire for Giovanna ,then with his remorse when he hears and sees his victim everywhere in the house.It also depicts Giovanna 's obsession: to live her passionate love while staying a respectable lady ,to stop being "invited by men";and to a lesser degree Lo Spagnolo's : in a very short scene ,he lights a cigarette and his match lights Gino's body."Ossessione" is a masterpiece of Italy's fascist years,at a time this country did not produce many great works.They say it shocked a lot of people.

Luchino Visconti's debut film, this Italian noir is generally credited with launching the Neorealist movement—well, it says so right on the back of the box—and is a sometimes penetrating, sometimes lugubrious portrait of lonesome individuals in moral flux. In Fascist Italy, an assortment of characters—including an ingenuous drifter who espouses Communist virtues—embody the remote desperations of a country searching for its identity from without, drifting phantasms longing for a soul. Although Visconti's compassion for the disenfranchised and his ability to express their lamentable conditions was already well-developed, the spider web of deceit here is too tenuous—Gino is so unhinged to begin with that his undoing seems less a matter of fate or manipulation than a self-fulfilling prophesy—the cosmic irony too didactic, the illicit relationship too strained with bathos. All the same, it's incisive and essential, although its actual impact on film history is certainly debatable.