Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 125: Sat May 4

Ossessione (Visconti, 1943): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.15pm


This film, part of the Italian Neorealism season at BFI Southbank, also screens on May 12th. You can find the details here.

Time Out review:
Luchino Visconti's stunning feature debut transposes The Postman Always Rings Twice to the endless, empty lowlands of the Po Delta. There, an itinerant labourer (Massimo Girotti) stumbles into a tatty roadside trattoria and an emotional quagmire. Seduced by Calamai, he disposes of her fat, doltish husband (Juan de Landa), and the familiar Cain litany - lust, greed, murder, recrimination - begins. Ossessione is often described as the harbinger of neo-realism, but the pictorial beauty (and astute use of music, often ironically) are pure Visconti, while the bleak view of sexual passion poaches on authentic noir territory, steeped, as co-scriptwriter Giuseppe De Santis put it, 'in the air of death and sperm'.
Sheila Johnston

Here (and above) is an extract.

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