Ossessione

OSSESSIONE Massimo Girotti, Clara Calamai (1943, Image, 142 mins., unrated, subtitled, only on DVD) James M. Cain may not be credited, but there’s no question that director-cowriter Luchino Visconti, in his feature debut, reworked Cain’s steamy crime-and-ironic-punishment novel The Postman Always Rings Twice (and added a homoerotically charged subplot). Transposing the action to a bleak rural Italy, Visconti does nearly as good a job as Hollywood did four years later, and trumps the lame Bob Rafelson 1981 remake with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange.