Originally banned by the Fascists for its portrayal of an extramarital affair and murder, the story centres around a handsome young drifter, Gino (Massimo Girotti). Gino wanders into a bar run by old man Bragana, much older husband to Giovanna (Clara Calamai). Gino and Giovanna begin an affair, eventually plotting to murder her husband before making an attempt to live out their guilt-stained lives. Although many neorealist directors (Rossellini, to name one) got their start at Cinecitta under Mussolini, the deeply anti-Catholic and anti-family values of Ossessione proved to be too outrageous to ignore.
I would contend that the film is not just socially subversive but sexually too; Visconti, who was openly homosexual, upends cinematic representations of gender relations, particularly in relation to the noir genre. He casts a scopophilic eye on his male lead — a choice which redirects the blame that is often cast on the archetype of the seductive female. The love triangle is fleshed out past one-dimensional class stereotypes; the cuckolded husband, while a bourgeois bore, is also warm and fatherly at times, with a beautiful singing voice. Giovanna is torn between genuine love and bourgeois comfort, but isn’t the grasping, conniving femme fatale we’ve come to associate with the genre. As both a committed Communist and a nostalgic aristocrat, Visconti portrays the couple as trying to live between two worlds. They have flouted all traditional morality, but remain shackled to their worldly goods; a tension that simply cannot be. His inclinations toward political and sexual subversion are all the more apparent when compared to Tay Garnett’s production code-era adaptation of the novel, backed by Hollywood’s least subversive studio, MGM.
