"Ossessione" is surprisingly not the first foreign language adaptation of James M. Cain's classic hard-boiled crime story "The Postman Always Rings Twice". It had been done once before in France, apparently.
The basic plotline seems like it should be a film noir standard, ie. A guy meets a dame in a loveless marriage with an unpleasant older guy. The dame plays the classic femme fatale and lures the guy into a scheme of murder.
Here the guy's guilt over the murder plays more of a role than it did in the '70s version with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange. I wasn't crazy about that version either. I found it impossible to care too much about the characters, especially Nicholson.
Here, the guy is more likeable, but I didn't really believe the relationship between the two.
"Ossessione" was Visconti's first movie. It seems he had a lot of tricks up his sleeve in terms of how to frame and light a shot, especially of human faces. It reminded me of Tarkovsky's first movie, "Ivan's Childhood".
I didn't like it as much as that one, though. It's too long and unwound. Perhaps Visconti was so invested in telling his story visually that he didn't bother with tightening up the screenplay. It's at least half an hour too long and I often lost interest.
The basic plotline seems like it should be a film noir standard, ie. A guy meets a dame in a loveless marriage with an unpleasant older guy. The dame plays the classic femme fatale and lures the guy into a scheme of murder.
Here the guy's guilt over the murder plays more of a role than it did in the '70s version with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange. I wasn't crazy about that version either. I found it impossible to care too much about the characters, especially Nicholson.
Here, the guy is more likeable, but I didn't really believe the relationship between the two.
"Ossessione" was Visconti's first movie. It seems he had a lot of tricks up his sleeve in terms of how to frame and light a shot, especially of human faces. It reminded me of Tarkovsky's first movie, "Ivan's Childhood".
I didn't like it as much as that one, though. It's too long and unwound. Perhaps Visconti was so invested in telling his story visually that he didn't bother with tightening up the screenplay. It's at least half an hour too long and I often lost interest.