The analysis of the circumstances under which Visconti's first feature film came to be made will also consider the connection between Ossessione and James M. Cain's
'noir' novella The Postman A/ways Rings Twice. Were it not for the fact that Jean Renoir one day placed a typewritten French translation of the Cain's work into Visconti's hands,
Ossessione would have never been made. What will be of import to this essay is the fact that Visconti's film is an adaptation and inaugurates an intense dialogue with literature
Rather than merely condensing the nove lIa, Visconti expands it, reworking the narrative material and ultimately quite radically recasting
Cain's story in terms ofplot, character, and themes. Elements not found in Cain's text
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Certainly Ossessione casts The
Postman Always Rings Twice in a new light and offers a different cross-cultural interpretation of the Arnerican narrative.
The energies mobilized in this polemic for new directions would eventually find artistic expression into the movement known as neorealism. Indeed, it is interesting to note that the term 'neorealism' was "first applied not to post-war Italian cinema but, instead, to the French films of the thirties in an article written by Umberto Barbaro in 1943" (Bondanella 24). Ossessione, was one of the fIfSt children ofthis lively intellectual atmosphere but before examining in detail Visconti's
Even though both Girotti and Calamai were rising stars of Italian cinema, Visconti showed no deference as he resolutely pursued his wish to strip "the glamour and polished mannerisms from their performances" and to capture "the rugged quality of Cain's novel and to use it for his own purposes" (Bacon 15).

The second part of Ossessione begins on a train heading for the port city of Ancona.
Gino has boarded it without a ticket and when the conductor cornes Gino informs him that he has no money to pay for one. The exchange between Gino and the