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Topic: Ossessione

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	Amazon.com: Ossessione: DVD: Clara Calamai,Massimo Girotti,Dhia Cristiani,Elio Marcuzzo,Vittorio Duse,Michele ... (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-27)
		Ossessione isn't just the finest film version of The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain's classic tale of murder, betrayal, and erotic obsession; it's also the first masterpiece of Italian neorealism and a key historical precursor of film noir.
		The utter desperation of the two characters' lives is beautifully realized and is nicely contrasted with the vagabond's existance that he is clearly happy with.
		"Ossessione" may possess a few blemishes, but director Luchino Visconti achieves nearly ideal results, rendered from modest resources, in scene after scene throughout the entire...
	www.amazon.com /Ossessione-Clara-Calamai/dp/B0000687DE (1956 words)

	Turner Classic Movies This Month Article (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-27)
		Ossessione, with its earthy characters, frank sensuality, and visual authenticity provided by location photography, was a dramatic contrast.
		Ossessione was not shown in the U.S. for many years because of a dispute with MGM over the rights to Cain's novel, and even now it's rarely seen except at an occasional museum or film archive screening.
		Elusive as it is, Ossessione remains an intriguing and historically important milestone in Italian cinema.
	www.turnerclassicmovies.com /ThisMonth/Article/0,,1193\|1194\|\|,00.html (816 words)

	Project 2 Example
		The viewer is left with a sense of dissatisfaction as unaccounted for instances develop in the film that suspected you since the bathtub incident" by the district attorney causes the viewer to snort inexisted.
		Ossessione, on the other hand, relies on the novel to build a convincing case against Gino, producing witnesses whose testimony leads police investigators to the murderer.
		The dramatic irony produced as Gino and Giovanna struggle with their love, mistrust, and fear of each other while police are preparing for their arrest, builds suspense for the viewer and develops into a struggle between wanting to see justice done and wanting the lovers to succeed in defying authority and building a lasting relationship.
	www.ux1.eiu.edu /~cflds/project_3_example.htm (2773 words)

	BBC - BBC Four Cinema - Ossessione
		Ossessione was so scandalous on its release that an archbishop was asked to sprinkle holy water in the auditorium following the screening.
		Visconti's sweeping overhead camera, coming to rest on expressive close-ups, are a pure joy and capture beautifully the face of tormented consciences, agonised by betrayal, caught up in the daily bustle of Ancona's street life.
		Unlike Visconti's later work (most notably The Leopard, 1963), Ossessione is not tied up in political or social history yet it became an obsession with the church and Mussolini's Cultural Ministry who deemed it "a film that stinks of latrines".
	www.bbc.co.uk /bbcfour/cinema/features/ossessione.shtml (361 words)

	Ossessione (Obsession)
		The characters are so real, so anchored to their location, that you can feel their lust, smell their sweat, become intoxicated by the cloud of petrol fumes and the dust that surrounds them.
		Ossessione’s melange of film noir and neo-realism is quite stunning, and it is surprising to see how well the two complement each other.
		Ossessione may not have the unbridled artistic brilliance or social conscience of Visconti’s subsequent historical frescos and neo-realist dramas, but its handling of suspense is masterful, as is its portrayal of human fallibility.
	frenchfilms.topcities.com /nf_Ossessione_rev.html (900 words)

	Movie-Vault.com: Print Review
		Generally considered the first piece of Italian neo-realism, or at least a prototype, Ossessione (meaning, you'll doubtless be surprised to learn, Obsession) is undeniably a landmark film, but many have doubts as to its cinematic merit.
		However, to dismiss Ossessione as historical curiosity is a shame; it's a fine, absorbing film which contains quite a few elements that come back into play in later Visconti films.
		Especially interesting are the musical elements: the amateur-singer contest for arias (this is especially appropriate since Visconti's later movies would themselves be deemed operatic), and the shot where two characters walk across an open plaza, followed by a tracking camera, which picks up a musician in the right hand corner eventually.
	www.movie-vault.com /archive/printreview.pl?action=moviereview&movieid=DiqKKWUbKWfagmBc (364 words)

	DVD Booty - Ossessione
		I chose "Ossessione" but almost changed my mind when I saw it was based on "TPART".
		However, "Ossessione" stands so much taller in so many ways that I'm not sure I'll ever feel the need to watch "TPART" again.
		Ossessione, Luchino Visconti, Clara Calamai, Massimo Girotti, Dhia Cristiani, Elio Marcuzzo, Vittor...
	www.dvdbooty.com /dvds/ossessione (511 words)

	Guardian Unlimited Books \| Review \| Wife fights
		Renoir gave a copy of the book to Visconti as the latter looked for material to assist in Italian cinema's drive for realism before the second world war (Ossessione's scriptwriters were all critics for the influential Cinemà magazine).
		No adaptation rights were ever acquired, and distribution of Ossessione was suppressed in the US by MGM, who had brought out their own adaptation.
		Ossessione's main innovations are that Bragana's death is a spur-of-the-moment crime passionel, unlike Frank and Cora's thought-out murder; and the invention of the character of Lo Spagnolo ("the Spaniard"), Gino's fellow drifter who sets the police on him, supplies a clear homoerotic undertone.
	books.guardian.co.uk /review/story/0,12084,1216270,00.html (544 words)

	Ossessione (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-27)
		Ossessione is the second of, to date, four film adaptations of James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice.
		Story has it that Renoir recommended the novel to Visconti when the Italian was working as his assistant in France before the war.
		Neo-realism is often said to have been born with Ossessione - the manifestos of Zavattini and Barbaro came out just before the film.
	www.st-andrews.ac.uk /~basement/reviews/ossessione.html (580 words)

	village voice > film > 'The Films of Luchino Visconti' by Elliott Stein
		A number of them involve the moral disintegration of a family, but Visconti usually seems ambivalently drawn to the decadent society he's ostensibly criticizing.
		His stylistic debt to Renoir is confined to Ossessione, which transposes The Postman Always Rings Twice to the Po delta.
		Ossessione's co-writer, Giuseppe De Santis, describes the film as "steeped in the air of death and sperm." The Catholic Film Center condemned it.
	www.villagevoice.com /issues/0446/stein.php (713 words)

	The DVD Journal \| Quick Reviews: Ossessione
		The film was a harbinger for the Neo-realist movement, as it concerned the working class and used real locations to tell its story — and for that it was censored by the reigning fascists.
		Visconti makes sure that even the most unsympathetic characters in Ossessione have plausible motivations, as the film takes pains to create sympathy for these downtrodden people who feel murder is their only solution.
		This would be unacceptable from most films on DVD — Ossessione is an exception, as the original negative was destroyed by the Italian fascists during World War II.
	www.dvdjournal.com /quickreviews/o/ossessione.q.shtml (803 words)

	DVD Times - Ossessione
		Luchino Visconti’s first feature, Ossessione, also stands as the first Italian neo-realist film, spearheading a movement created as much by circumstance (World War II) as it was by the ideologies of directors such as Roberto Rossellini and Giuseppe De Santis (one of the writers of Ossessione as well as an assistant director).
		Cain, of course, was a writer of pulp fictions, many of which were translated onto the big screen, prompting at least three classics: Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce with Joan Crawford and another adaptation of The Postman Always Rings Twice, this one made in 1946 and starring John Garfield and Lana Turner.
		In fact, Ossessione could be remade today shot by shot with actors imitating Girotti, et al exactly and modern audiences would hardly pick up on a single anachronism.
	www.dvdtimes.co.uk /content.php?contentid=55638 (1545 words)

	Rotten Tomatoes Forums - Visconti's "La Terra Trema" .... opinions wanted on Ossessione...
		Ossessione is really good, if not a masterpiece.
		Some of the best moments in Ossessione are when the book's ideas are visualized - the overturned car scene is particularly interesting, with the camera almost incidentaly reavealing details about the landscape and crime scene.
		Ossessione is a good film, well made, but it never reaches greatness.
	www.rottentomatoes.com /vine/showthread.php?t=160869 (663 words)

	Ossessione Movie
		Ossessione isn't just the finest film version of The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain's classic tale of murder, betrayal, and erotic obsession; it's also the first masterpiece of Italian neorealism and a key historical precursor of film noir.
		A handsome drifter (Massimo Girotti) fetches up at an isolated roadhouse, gets mutually besotted with the proprietor's sultry wife (Clara Calamai), and has soon carried out a plot to murder the older man in an apparent off-road accident.
		This film is a classic on so many levels and for so many reasons, I can't even encapsulate them all.
	www.movie-pages.com /movie/ossessione/B0000687DE (936 words)

	[No title]
		Following the embryonic phase with its idea of cinema as a possible world, Ossessione (Obsession, 1942; released in English as Ossessione) opened a new phase for Italian cinema, one of real morphogenesis, the result of which would be the emergence of a series of distinguished filmmakers with strongly autonomous visions.
		1 Massimo Girotti and Clara Calami in Luchino Visconti's Ossessione, 1942.
		The Visconti of Ossessione and the Rossellini of Roma clttà aperta can be included in the same list, yet they did not possess-it is wise to clarify this at once-the same cultural and ideological chromosomes and would go on to create rather dissimilar and distinct oeuvres.
	www.uga.edu /~italian/cinema/sart.htm (5126 words)

	ossessione (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-27)
		From The Movie Guide: "Despite its exquisitely hardboiled source material and film noir plot, OSSESSIONE is often cited as the first harbinger of neorealism.
		The film was shot in the Italian countryside (as opposed to the studios --- a technique favored by Jean Renoir, with whom Visconti apprenticed) and showed the Italian people living in their natural environs.
		A later version of Cain's novel was made in 1946 by MGM, starring Lana Turner and John Garfield.
	yorty.sonoma.edu /filmfrog/reviews/o/ossessione.html (519 words)

	Images - Luchino Visconti on DVD: Ossessione and La Terra Trema (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-27)
		Visconti made only 14 features in his career, along with a few contributions to omnibus movies such as Boccaccio 70, but access to them has been surprisingly spotty given his generally high standing in film history.
		His first feature, Ossessione (1942), was initially banned by a scandalized Church and fascist censors.
		Visconti appealed to Mussolini, who is reported to have liked Ossessione and passed it with a few cuts.
	www.imagesjournal.com /2002/reviews/visconti (80 words)

	ossessione
		In the Visconti's doomed love affair there were several plot points changed, though the ending was almost similar to the American versions.
		Ossessione becomes more intensified as a bleak view of sexual passion that steps begrudgingly away from neo-realism into film noir territory.
		Screenwriter Giuseppe De Santis' description of the steamy story as "in the air of death and sperm," is the best I heard.
	www.sover.net /~ozus/ossessione.htm (850 words)

	Ossessione (1943) (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-27)
		It had been some time since I had seen Ossessione, and having now seen both within a short period of time I will have to revise my opinion.
		Ossessione is a superior film, which instead of neatly bringing all of the elements of the noir thriller together comes across as more of a character study.
		The murder does not occur until the second half of the film, and the investigation of and resolution of the crime take a back seat to the exploration of the doomed relationship between Gino and Giovanna, and the effect of the crime on each of them.
	www.michaeldvd.com.au /Reviews/Reviews.asp?ID=6072 (1231 words)

	Intelliflix: Rent Ossessione on DVD (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-27)
		They decide to kill off her spouse and collect his hefty insurance premium, but soon the lovers are trapped in a spiral of deception, jealousy, and fate.
		Banned and censored for years, "Ossessione" profoundly affected generations of audiences after causing a stormy religious and political scandal in Italy, and is now available in its original, uncensored director's cut.
		PS: You''ll appreciate it even more if you see the original Postman Always Rings Twice, which was based on this, first.
	www.intelliflix.com /movie_view.dvd?id=35126 (230 words)

	Ossessione - Films on DVD and Video - MovieMail UK
		Visconti's Ossessione is a masterful demonstration of how to capture and hold attention.
		The first five minutes of the film draw us in and from there, we are held until the end.
		With his debut feature Ossessione (1942), Italian director Luchino Visconti (1906 - 1976) distilled the ambition, the protests, the irony and the polemics of a whole group of filmmakers who longed to explore the artistic possibilities of cinema which had for m...
	www.moviemail-online.co.uk /films/5713 (641 words)

	Ossessione [1942] (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-27)
		While films such as 'Rome, Open City' (1945, Roberto Rossellini) & 'The Bicycle Thieves' (1948, Vittorio de Sica) are cited as formative examples of the movement that would be known as 'Italian Neo-Realism', it's really 'Ossessione' that deserves that status.
		The use of amateur-actors (or unknowns) and the "realistic" look would be key - and lead towards those celebrated films mentioned previously.
		'Ossessione' was the start of one of the careers of one of the great European auteurs of the twentieth-century, and deserves to be seen alongside other brilliant works by Visconti such as 'The Leopard', 'Rocco and His Brothers' & 'La Terra Trema.' (5 out of 5)
	www.armchairfans.co.uk /books/B000094P2R (158 words)

	Ossessione DVD Movie
		They decide to kill off her spouse and collect his hefty insurance premium, but soon the lovers are trapped in a spiral of deception, jealousy, and fate.
		Banned and censored for years, "Ossessione" profoundly affected generations of audiences after causing a stormy religious and political scandal in Italy, and is now available in its original, uncensored director's cut.
		Remember to focus your comments on Ossessione DVD.
	www.cduniverse.com /search/xx/movie/pid/3666963/a/Ossessione.htm (535 words)

	DVD Talk > Reviews > Ossessione > Printer Friendly
		And in fact, Ossessione, Visconti's first feature, is on the surface a melodrama.
		VIDEO:Image Entertainment's DVD release of Ossessione is a full-frame transfer (1.33:1) that is a disaster, with print damage, motion distortion, scratches, and countless other visual problems.
		PACKAGING: Purple for passion defines the keep case cover and label for Ossessione's disc, while Trema's keep case cover and label reprint a version of the painted poster art.
	www.dvdtalk.com /reviews/print.php?ID=4796 (1187 words)

	Ossessione - Trailer - Showtimes - Cast - Movies - New York Times
		Gino then allows her to talk him into killing Bragana to get the insurance money, with predictable results.
		Ossessione caused a sensation not just because of its lurid subject matter but also because Visconti's realist style makes you practically feel the heat and dirt and sweat of the film's environment.
		Luchino Visconti brought his blue-blood vision of luxury, elegance and erudition to everything he touched.
	movies.nytimes.com /movie/36698/Ossessione/overview (275 words)

	Ossessione - Von Liebe besessen \| wissen.de
		Unmittelbar nach der Uraufführung wird Luchino Viscontis »Ossessione« von der staatlichen Zensur verboten.
		Visconti setzt sich von den konventionellen italienischen Spielfilmen der Mussolini-Ära ab, weil er sich an der italienischen Alltagswirklichkeit orientiert.
		»Ossessione« erzählt von einer unglücklichen, impulsiven Ehefrau, die sich in einen Landstreicher verliebt.
	www.wissen.de /wde/generator/wissen/panplates/lobby/natur_technik/cnt_special_16/index,page=1142896.html (307 words)

	http://xft001/classes/intlfilm/italianneorealism.htm
		Thus, Ossessione is a "proto"-Neo-Realist film, representing a first foray toward Neo-realism, but being too aesthetically-aggressive to fit within that later tradition.
		It is this tension between realism and aestheticism that critic Peter Bonadella suggests is true of Italian cinema in the late 1940s, thus perhaps even suggesting that Ossessione belongs in the mainstream of the Neo-Realist tradition, though not many critics would agree with him.
		First and foremost, Ossessione is a film whose visuals drip with a gritty presentation of raw sexuality.
	www.montana.edu /metz/website/intlfilm/italianneorealism.htm (2564 words)

	GreenCine \| product main - Ossessione (1943)
		Ossessione caused a sensation not just because of its lurid subject matter but also because Visconti's realist style makes you practically feel the heat and dirt and sweat of the film's environment.
		OSSESSIONE is one strange movie--when viewed today, that is. If you can imagine watching it back in 1943 when it was made (under Mussolini's rule), you'll have a different "take" on it.
		Now, it appears melodramatic in the extreme--characters doing the love-at-first-sight thing and having epiphanies every few minutes--and resolutely cutting away from each dramatic event (murder, sex) just before it takes place.
	www.greencine.com /webCatalog?id=20057 (495 words)

	VH1.com : Movies : Movie : Ossessione : Review
		Influenced by the work of Jean Renoir, Visconti keeps his camera at a distance, except in key emotional moments, and uses mobile long takes to relate the characters to their locations, revealing how their squalid existences and fear of omnipresent poverty can provoke tragedy.
		Although Ossessione did not manifest neorealism's later concerns with war experiences and social problems, Visconti's location shooting and attention to the realistic details of everyday life among the working class became hallmarks of the movement's drive to depict the lives of ordinary people at the mercy of their surroundings.
		While it did not have an immediate impact with the public, Ossessione still paved the way for Italian filmmakers to pursue a different aesthetic, rendering it a pivotal work in Italian film history.
	www.vh1.com /movies/movie/26019/review.jhtml (272 words)

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