This movie, by then first time director Luchino Visconti, is considered to be the start-off of Italian neo-realism in film. Although many of the elements are there; the naked portrayal of rural life, the attention for social context, Visconti doesn’t place them in the foreground. This is a straight story, based on James M. Cain’s novel ‘The Postman Always Rings Twice’, now set in the Italian countryside, where bum Gino Costa (Massimo Girotti) wanders into the dysfunctional marriage of Giovanna Bragana (Clara Calamai) and Giuseppe Bragana (Juan de Landa). The film is extremely structured, there are a lot of mirrored scenes, also some time jumps, very brave, some are a bit hard. Visconti plays a lot with the pace of the story; speeding up and slowing down as a means to intensify certain scenes. Part two, after the killing, was a bit too long for me, compared to the more compact tension in the beginning, but this is a stunning movie from Luchino Visconti. Ossessione @ imdb
