Trailer
Plot summary
Giovanna Bragana works alongside Giuseppe, the older man she married for his money, at the tavern and filling station they keep in the Po Valley. A wandering tramp, Gino Costa, stops there. Giuseppe sends him away, but Gino offers to repair the vehicle instead of paying, and the two men discover they both served as Bersaglieri. While Giuseppe is gone for a part, Gino and Giovanna confess their feelings and begin an affair. Giuseppe, unaware of the situation and pleased with his new helper, tells Gino he may stay on. After several days Gino asks Giovanna to come away with him; she agrees at first, then changes her mind on the way to the station, and he leaves alone.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Ossessione (1943)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- After a few screenings in Rome and northern Italy drew outraged reactions from Fascist and Church authorities, Ossessione was banned by the Fascist government in 1943; the Fascists later destroyed the film, but Visconti kept a duplicate negative from which all existing prints were made.
- Visconti adapted The Postman Always Rings Twice with writers he chose from the Milanese magazine Cinema, which was edited by Vittorio Mussolini, Benito Mussolini's son; the group included Mario Alicata, Gianni Puccini, Antonio Pietrangeli and Giuseppe De Santis, and several of them, like Visconti, later joined the resistance.
- Visconti had first wanted to adapt a story by the Italian realist writer Giovanni Verga, but Fascist authorities turned it down because it dealt with bandits; he later uncovered a French translation of The Postman Always Rings Twice that director Jean Renoir had given him while he was working in France in the 1930s.
- Italy's Ministry of Culture has since placed Ossessione on its list of 100 Italian films to be saved, a list that distinguishes films which "changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978."
