Ossessione ([ossesˈsjoːne], "Obsession") is a 1943 Italian crime drama film directed and co-written by Luchino Visconti, in his directorial debut.
It is an unauthorized and uncredited adaptation of the 1934 novel The Postman Always Rings Twice by American author James M. Cain, and stars Clara Calamai, Massimo Girotti, and Juan de Landa in the leading roles.
Gino Costa, a wandering tramp, stops at a small roadside tavern and petrol station in the Po Valley, run by Giovanna Bragana and her older husband, Giuseppe.
When they reach the city of Ancona, Gino spends a night at an inn with Spagnolo, where he reveals that he cannot stop thinking about Giovanna.
Meanwhile, two men who arrived on the scene shortly after Giuseppe's death have contacted the police, and their description of events does not quite match that given by Gino and Giovanna.
After they make up and spend some romantic time together on the beach, Gino tells Giovanna about the detective and she finally agrees that they need to leave the tavern.
He had initially wanted to adapt a story by Giovanni Verga, the Italian realist writer and one of his greatest influences, but that project was turned down almost immediately by the Fascist authorities due to its subject matter, which revolved around bandits.
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.
He made changes such as tailoring the script to its Italian setting and adding a character (Lo Spagnolo), but the main departure from the novel and the defining characteristic of the film is the manner in which it confronts the realities of life.
In one particularly memorable scene that anticipates a major theme of neorealism, Giovanna, Ossessione's central female character, enters her wildly messy kitchen, serves herself a bowl of soup and sits down with a newspaper, only to fall asleep, slumped over wearily in the midst of the confusion.
The landscape itself is realistic, and Visconti takes great care to situate his characters in a rural Italy that remains for the most part unromanticized.
Nearly the entire story is told using medium and long shots, with Visconti choosing to employ close-ups only at moments of intense emotion.
Characters are depicted interacting with and moving around within their environment; to help create this effect, Visconti favors long and ponderous shots, while making use of depth of focus to highlight the variety of action occurring throughout the space of the frame.
He resists identifying solely with one character and prefers instead to maintain a distance, taking them all in with his viewfinder as independent, but irrevocably tangled, components of a larger cast, which includes the sets, scenery, and landscape, as well as what goes on outside of the frame.
Rather than granting them the freedom they so desperately seek, however, the murder only heightens the need for deception and makes more acute the guilt they had previously been dealing with.
Despite Giovanna's attempt to construct a normal life with Gino, Giuseppe's presence seems to remain long after they return to the inn.
The character of Lo Spagnolo (The Spaniard), Visconti's main textual departure from the novel, plays a pivotal role in the story of Ossessione.
After failing to convince Giovanna to flee with him, Gino meets Spagnolo after boarding a train to the city, and the two of them strike up an instant friendship, subsequently working and living together.
Spagnolo is an actor who works as a street vendor and serves as a foil to Giovanna's traditionalism and inability to let go of the material lifestyle.
The limited roles made available by society prove to be insufficient in providing narratives for their lives that bring them closer to happiness.
Giovanna is pulled away from the security of her marriage to the repulsive Giuseppe by a desire for true love and fulfillment, whose potential is actualized with the appearance of Gino.
From the first time that they sleep together, after which Giovanna shares with Gino all of her deepest problems while he listens to the sound of waves in a seashell, it is clear that he answers only to the open road, identifying it as his alternative to becoming an active part of mainstream society.
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, which prompted outraged reactions from Fascist and Church authorities, the film was banned by the Fascist government that had been reestablished in the German-occupied part of Italy after the September 1943 armistice.