Ossessione
| Ossessione | |
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Film poster
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| Directed by | Luchino Visconti |
| Screenplay by | Luchino Visconti Mario Alicata Giuseppe De Santis Gianni Puccini |
| Based on |
The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain |
| Starring |
Clara Calamai Massimo Girotti Dhia Cristiani |
| Music by | Giuseppe Rosati |
| Cinematography |
Domenico Scala Aldo Tonti |
| Edited by | Mario Serandrei |
| Distributed by | Industrie Cinematografiche Italiane |
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Release date
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Running time
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140 min. |
| Language | Italian |
Ossessione (English: Obsession) is an Italian 1943 film based on the novel The Postman Always Rings Twice, by James M. Cain. Luchino Visconti’s first feature film, it is considered by many to be the first Italian neorealist film, though there is some debate about whether such a categorization is accurate.
Working under the censorship of the Fascist Italian government, Visconti encountered problems with the production even before filming commenced. He had initially planned to adapt a story by Giovanni Verga, a renowned Italian realist writer and one of his greatest influences, but it was turned down almost immediately by the Fascist authorities due to its subject matter, which revolved around bandits. Around this time, Visconti uncovered a French translation of Cain’s novel which, famously, had been given to him by French director Jean Renoir while he was working in France in the 1930s.
Visconti adapted the script with a group of men he selected from the Milanese magazine Cinema. The members of this group were talented filmmakers and writers and played a large role in the emerging neorealist movement: Mario Alicata, Gianni Puccini, Antonio Pietrangeli and Giuseppe De Santis. When Ossessione was completed and released in 1943, it was far from the innocent murder mystery the authorities had expected; after a few screenings in Rome and northern Italy, prompting outraged reactions from Fascist and Church authorities, the film was banned by the Fascist government reestablished in the German occupied part of Italy after the September 1943 armistice. Eventually the Fascists destroyed the film, but Visconti managed to keep a duplicate negative from which all existing prints have been made. After the war, Ossessione encountered more problems with mass distribution, this time in the United States. As a result of the wartime production schedule, Visconti had never obtained the rights to the novel and Metro-Goldwyn Mayer began production on another version of the film, directed by Tay Garnett (The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1946), while the Fascist ban on Visconti’s work was still in effect.
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Wikipedia