Luchino Visconti's Ossessione suffers from the fundamental problem that it tries to combine two genres that have absolutely nothing to do with each other. One the one hand, the film is based off The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain, the source of one of the most famous film noir in cinematic history. But on the other, Visconti films this hard-boiled story with a slow, naturalistic gaze. Ossessione is considered to be one of the very first Italian Neorealist films. And right there we encounter an irreparable conflict in interest. Film noir are ultra-stylized, pscyhologically driven potboilers. Italian Neorealism sought to free itself from the chains of Hollywood stylization and focused on depicting reality. The two are not meant to be combined together. And yet this is exactly what Visconti attempted to do. The result is a slow, grinding film that lasts almost two and a half hours. The film is about a tramp who falls in love with the young wife of a restaurant owner. They decide to murder her husband, take over his business, and start a new life. However, the horror and guilt at their decision ultimately leads to their downfall. Of course, it is almost impossible to determine this from the film. Several times, the tramp and the wife split up and go their separate ways only to come back together in the end. There is absolutely NO sense of immediacy, that crucial ingredient that is part of the life blood of film noir. Instead we have a misfire of truly tragic proportions. What is this film? It sure as hell isn't a film noir.
5/10
No comments:
Post a Comment