Avis des critiques

In its own way, OSSESSIONE offered a carefree escape for ordinary Italians through Visconti’s Neorealist approach to filming his story on the Italian streets of Ancona, a lively place where people go to vacation, enjoy street fairs and carnival rides, and gather together communally to eat, drink, and participate in contests and games.

Watching the film today, it is as much Ossessione’s radical sexuality that provides its devastating punch as much as its history. With its title translating literally to ‘obsession’, Nowell-Smith has described it as “a film about the destructive power of sexual passion”15, and the viciousness with which Visconti executes his blistering attack on normative romantic idealism is powerful and complex.

There are no postmen in Visconti’s proto-neo-realist tragedy, though the source material is James M. Cain The Postman Always Rings Twice... Even the boorish, boarish husband is pitiable—dressed up for a day in town, he climbs a stage and sings, as if to drown out the lovers seated in the audience, quietly planning his death.

...This all benefits greatly from the Renoir influence, open-air lenses taking in a bocce ball match between lumpy locals or a chummy padre astride a bicycle with a belt of bullets strapped across his cassock, culminating in Girotti and the gay traveling artist (Elio Marcuzzo) tramping like Gabin and Dalio in Grand Illusion.