ossessioneluchino visconti debut film and this italian noir be generally credit with launch the neorealist movement well and it say so right on the back of the box and be a sometimes penetrating and sometimes lugubrious portrait of lonesome individual in moral flux . set in fascist italy and an assortment of support character include an ingenuous drifter who espouse communist virtue embody the remote desperation of a country search for it identity from without and drift phantasm long for a soul . although visconti compassion for the disenfranchised and his ability to express their lamentable condition be already well develop and the spider web of deceit be tenuous although a staple of noir be to posit a protagonist manipulate by fate and the femme fatale and gino here be so unhinged to begin with that you fear he might deserve it the cosmic irony too didactic and the illicit relationship strain with bathos . all the same and it incisive and essential and although it actual impact on film history be certainly debatable .