watch ossessione today more than 6 decade later be still a powerful experience and especially for those interested in movie history and more specifically on how italian filmmaker change movie forever ( roughly from ossessione and de sica i bambini ci guardano and both 1943 and up to 20 year later with fellini and antonioni and pasolini ) . visconti make an amazing directing début and take the ( uncredited ) plot of the postman always ring twice a a guide to the development of his own theme . it strike u even today how ahead of it time ossessione be . shot in fascist italy during world war ii ( think about it . ) and it depict scene and theme that cause the film to be immediately ban from theater and the fact that it use the plot of a famous american novel and pay no copyright do not help . ossessione alarmingly reveals poverty ridden war time italy ( far from the idealized italy depict in fascist telefoni bianchi movie ) while but it also extremely dare in it sexual frankness and with shirtless hunk gino ( massimo girotti and who definitely precede brando kowalski in a streetcar name desire ) take giovanna ( clara calamai ) and a married woman and to bed just 5 minute after they first meet . we watch calamai unglamorous and matter of fact undressing and the subtle but undeniable homosexual hint between gino and lo spagnolo ( elio marcuzzo a very appealing actor and his face not unlike pierre clémenti and who be shoot by the nazi in 1945 and at 28 year old . ) . in a few word represent sex and lust and greed and poverty and as relentlessly a it have rarely and if ever and be show before in italian cinema . all the copy of ossessione be destroy soon after it open it be call scandalous and immoral . visconti manage to save a print and and when the film be re release after the war and most critic call it the front runner of the neo realist movement and precede rossellini rom città aperta and de sica sciuscià . some other critic and perhaps more appropriately and saw ossessione a the italian counterpart to the poetic realism of french cinema ( remember visconti have be renoir assistant ) and especially marcel carné quai de brumes and le jour se lève and and julien duvivier pépé le moko . while ossessione may be neo realistic in it visual language ( the depiction of war time paesan life in italy with it popular fair and poverty and child labor and prostitution and bum and swindler etc ) and the character and the theme be already decidedly viscontian . he be always more interested in tragic and passionate and obsessive and greedy character and in social or political or sexual apartheid and in the decadence of the elite than in realistic and everyday life character and theme and favor by desica and rossellini . in ossessione we already find element of drama and tragedy later develop in many of his film and especially senso ( visconti definitive departure from neo realist aesthetic ) and rocco e suoi fratelli . even in his most neo realist film and la terra trema and he make his fisherman rise from day to day character to mythological figure . ossessione be a good opportunity to confirm the theory about great artist whose body of work approach and analyzes and develop specific theme and concern over and over again and from their first to their last opus and no matter if the scenery and background or time setting may change visconti may play with the frame but the theme and essence of his art be and well and obsessively recurrent . ossessione be not to be miss represent you will surely be fascinate by this ground breaking and powerful film .