Luchino Visconti (1943)
Based on James M Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice (which was inspired by Emile Zola’s Thérèse Raquin), Ossessione is considered to be a seminal film in Italian neorealist cinema. It’s not hard to appreciate why but the tension between the melodramatic story (which has proved enduringly serviceable to film-makers) and the physical settings – and Visconti’s observation of people in those settings – is puzzling and increasingly unsatisfying. You can see the influence of the film on American movies too: there’s a passage in Ossessione, as there was in Rocco and His Brothers, which looks to have inspired The Godfather films especially. This is an amateur singing contest and it’s superbly staged by Visconti – as vividly observed social ritual and in terms of dramatising what’s happening at the margins of the singing event but at the centre of the main story. That story is the affair between the drifter Gino and Giovanna, who’s trapped in a loveless marriage to Giuseppe Bregana, a sweaty, dim-witted restaurant owner. After they’ve killed Giuseppe, Gino and Giovanna host what would now be a car boot sale to try and raise funds: this too is well done although the backstage goings on are more obvious. There are other fine things in Ossessione. As their guilt-ridden relationship goes from bad to worse, Gino strikes Giovanna in public, in a town square. A crowd gathers round in shock then melts away as interest quickly fades; Giovanna is left a lonely and humiliated little figure in long shot. Giuseppe Rosati’s score is intensely dramatic.
The sustained fascination of the images created by Visconti and his cinematographers, Domenico Scala and Aldo Tonti, means that Ossessione is never dull but there’s not too much that’s either realistic or neo-realistic about the basic plotting. (Visconti wrote the screenplay with Mario Alicata, Giuseppe De Santis and Gianni Puccini.) The progress of the police in bringing the lovers to justice is artificially delayed; indeed, the whole story, once Giuseppe has been dispatched, feels protracted. In Thérèse Raquin the murder of Camille is the concentrated turning point for Thérèse and her lover Laurent: it brings the couple together; things inevitably and, it seems, quickly unravel once Camille is dead. The decline of the passion between Gino and Giovanna gets you wondering what the obsession of the title actually amounted to. Their relationship revives in the closing stages largely for the sake of a big finish. Massimo Girotti nevertheless gives a memorable performance as Gino. The build-up to the first sight of his face and upper body and his physical impact in the early scenes, when Gino arrives at the Breganas’ roadside inn, are powerful – you understand what the advent of Gino means to Giovanna – and Girotti’s athleticism makes the sequences in which Gino is trying to escape truly dynamic. It’s effective that Clara Calamai’s Giovanna is definitely younger than her husband but older than Gino. Calamai, however, although strong in what she does, is monotonous – you wouldn’t need Gino’s congenital wanderlust to want to get away from her. The scenes between Girotti and Dhia Cristiani as a prostitute called Anita are much stronger – you share Anita’s disappointment that things between them don’t go further. Juan de Landa is excellent as the husband, especially in his revolting drunken singing in the car, on the way back from his victory in the song contest, and on the way to his death.
17 May 2013
