Adapted from James M. Cain’s popular novel The Postman Always Rings Twice, which would also be adapted by Hollywood three years later, Ossessione (US: Obsession) is notable for many reasons: it’s the first feature film directed by Italian master Luchino Visconti, the first example of what would become known as Italian neorealism, and Europe’s first true film noir (but only if earlier French poetic realism is excluded from the definition). Set in rural Italy, the film makes realistic art out of poverty and desperation, just as the other Italian neorealists would come to do (Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves, 1948; Roberto Rossellini’s Stromboli, 1950). Gino (Massimo Girotti) and Giovanna (Clara Calamai) have each tried to escape their stagnation through different means, Gino by drifting and Giovanna by marrying, but their mutual attraction provides a new out in the form of spousal murder. The lovers’ passion is palpable and the use of shadows adds to both the sensuality and the sense of doom. Visconti adds a major character who’s not in the novel: “the Spaniard” (Elio Marcuzzo) befriends Gio by paying his train fare, and soon the men set off to drift together, sharing a dreary room where the probably gay Spaniard stares at the handsome Gino while he sleeps.