Capital Celluloid 2013 - Day 137: Fri May 17

Ossessione (Visconti, 1943): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 6.10pm

This film, which screens as part of the Roots of Neorealism season, is also showing at BFI Southbank on May 15th. Details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Luchino Visconti's first solo effort and the first great Italian neorealist film (1942, 139 min.), Ossessione has remained virtually unknown because of legalities involving the novel on which it was based (James Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice). Visconti transforms the story's sexual tensions into something almost musical. Where would neorealism and its imitators have gone if this film had reached America ahead of Rossellini's Open City, if the lyricism of Visconti's reading had set the tone for filmmaking in the 40s instead of Rossellini's bitter, misunderstood matter-of-factness?
Don Druker

Here is the opening scene.

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