Category: 1943

Ossessione (1943)

Luchino Visconti | 2hr 20min

Ossessione’s derelict inns, sweaty singlets, and messy kitchens are far removed from the glamour of Hollywood’s film noirs, yet its forbidding tale of lust, murder, and fatalism nevertheless runs parallel to those expressionistic fables. When Gino’s hitchhiking lands him in a roadside tavern, the contempt that its co-owner Giovanna holds for her husband and business partner Giuseppe is revealed to be as strong as her attraction towards this new visitor. From there, an affair that maliciously seeks to remove Giuseppe from the picture unravels, revealing the dark hearts of those involved. Luchino Visconti’s camerawork is elegant here, navigating this conspiracy with intrigue as it turns towards a mirror during their nefarious plotting, and wanders through lives bars where secrets lurk between lovers.

With that said, Ossessione’s narrative is also impossible to remove from the social context it was made in. With Italy still under Fascist occupation in 1943, the hardships of the working class were at an all-time high, significantly deteriorating the nation’s sense of cultural identity and moral clarity. Neorealism was not yet a full-fledged movement, yet Visconti is thoughtfully sowing its seeds here, offering an unrelenting window into the life of the poor and the extremes to which they go simply for a taste of pleasure. His location shooting along provincial roads and in the seaside city of Ancona serves to underscore that authenticity as well, even as the narrative veers beyond the mundane and into gritty crime drama.

A crane shot lifting us above the truck, and introducing us to the roadside tavern where love and resentment will equally bloom.
A murder conspiracy unfolds in this reflection, catching Gino and Giovanna’s doubles as they sink to new, nefarious depths.

Still, Visconti’s merging of naturalism and fatalism was not exactly unheard of before his remarkable directorial debut. France’s poetic realism gracefully merged the two in the 1930s, seeing directors like Jean Renoir and Marcel Carné navigate tales of moral corruption with a floating visual style that no doubt influences Visconti here. Meanwhile, the fact that the film is based on the 1934 novel The Postman Always Rings Twice binds its roots close to American noirs, even as it introduces a devious femme fatale whose screen presence is far removed from the allure of Barbara Stanwyck or Mary Astor. Clara Calamai is no doubt a beautiful actress, but Visconti does not shroud her in soft lighting and trendy outfits. Giovanna’s lonely dinners in a grimy kitchen reveal a far sadder existence than her Hollywood counterparts, surrounding her with towers of dirty dishes as she reads from a newspaper and eats a bowl of pasta.

An early progenitor of Italian neorealism, using stone streets and buildings to imbue this tale with an unrelenting authenticity.
Visconti using the littered ground as his mise-en-scène in this high angle, composing a sparse yet messy shot.
Poverty encompasses Giovanna on every side with these stacked dishes and bottles – a beautifully crowded shot.

When two young, attractive people such as Gino and Giovanna fall into each other’s orbit then, it is plain to see just how easily their dreams of escape escalate into destructive delusion. After initial talks of murder lead to their first breakup, destiny seems to draw them back together in a bar, coaxing the lovers to believe in a greater force at play. “Before, the world seemed a big place. Now, there is only your shop,” Gino romantically murmurs as an oblivious Giuseppe performs onstage. Putting off their plans any further seems pointless – the time to strike presents itself when all three drive home together, and the two conspirators ultimately find the perfect opportunity to stage a deadly car accident.

Visconti’s camera is truly free as it drifts through this lively bar.
A secret affair hiding in plain sight, drowned out by drunken crowds and live singing.
Darkness wraps around the murderous lovers and their oblivious victim as they approach the point of no return.

Upon Gino and Giovanna’s return to the tavern, its atmosphere is more unwelcoming than ever, as if recognising the violence that has been inflicted upon its owner. It is dark and quiet inside, resurfacing Gino’s feelings of guilt as he realises what he has done. Giovanna’s desire to reopen shop with him is met with harsh rejection, which is only aggravated further by the discovery that she took out a life insurance policy before the murder. The more distance he places between them though, the greater her jealousy becomes, and Visconti’s camera soaks up the emotional drama as we follow her stalking him through streets. When Gino goes even further and confesses a heavy conscience to his new lover Anita, he is visually trapped behind his bed’s mesh netting in one aptly framed shot, effectively caught in Giovanna’s web while the police close in.

The tavern is dark and lifeless upon their return, the chairs stacked upon tables and visually imposing upon this shot.
The camera attaches to Giovanna as she stalks Gino through the streets, obsessively tracking his movements.
Mesh netting suffocating Gino as he begins to feel the consequences of his actions.

Clearly Gino is not the sort of man to learn from his mistakes though. When Giovanna comes forward with news of her pregnancy, he reconsiders their future together at an empty, overcast beach where they ultimately reconcile. As shallow pools of water catch their upside-down reflections, Visconti composes a scene of meagre romance in this lifeless locale, and even Giuseppe Rosati’s score continues its tense, foreboding melody. Giovanna may finally agree that leaving town is the best course of action, but they are fools to believe that they can simply start a new life together after all they have been through. Besides, that wicked hand of fate isn’t quite done with them yet, drawing Ossessione closer than ever to its film noir contemporaries.

Bleak, miserable romance on this wet beach, the lovers’ reflections caught in its shallow puddles.

The moment these lovers hit the road, we see inevitable tragedy take ironic shape and finally solidify when Gino tries to overtake a truck passing by an embankment. Just as Giovanna killed her husband by veering his car off-road, so too does her own story end at the hands of another driver, nudging her vehicle down a steep drop and into the water below. That the police should arrive a few moments later as Gino pulls Giovanna’s limp body from the wreckage only twists the knife deeper, delivering a far more degrading punishment to the man who blatantly ignored his own conscience on multiple occasions. Redemption is a luxury that the poor cannot afford in Ossessione, and through Visconti’s unvarnished, cynical naturalism, he adeptly delivers a solemn condemnation of moral decrepitude that cannot be swayed by fleeting hopes or half-hearted regrets.

Bitter justice is served twice over, both by the police and the invisible hand of fate.

Ossessione is currently streaming on Prime Video.

Day of Wrath (1943)

Carl Theodor Dreyer | 1hr 37min

For the residents of this 17th century Danish village, the end times are near. Suspicions of witchcraft have escalated into full-blown trials and executions, sentencing women like the elderly Herlof’s Marte to burn at the stake, while more fortunate suspects are spared only through deals made with local authorities. Meanwhile, the ominous ‘Dies Irae’ motif reverberates through choirs of young boys, echoing the sinister poem which opens this tale.

“Day of Wrath, dreadful night,

Heaven and earth in ashes burning,

And the sun beset by dead of night.

That Day of Wrath, that sulfurous day

When flaming heavens together roll,

And earth’s beautiful castle shall pass away.”

These portentous warnings bear strong resemblance to those in The Seventh Seal, and the gale which at one point fills the soundscape with howling chaos may very well be the same which haunts The Turin Horse, yet Day of Wrath precedes both films. This apocalypse is one of forsaken marriages, religious paranoia, and helpless scapegoats, crushing whatever glimmer of passion might emerge between forbidden lovers. Still, this portentous drama never truly rules out the question of whether some unknown, transcendent power holds sway over the fragile lives of humans, sending the damned to early graves while the living remain in its grip of mortal terror.

Hymnal lyrics of doom and despair lay out the apocalypse at hand, damning the people of Earth to perish in their own cruelty.
Choirs of young boys sing of the condemnation which awaits humanity on the Day of Judgement, chilling echoing the iconic ‘Dies Irae’ motif.

Young housewife Anne knows this feeling of dread too well. Her marriage to the local pastor Absalon was part of a bargain to save her late mother from accusations of witchcraft, and has since placed her under the thumb of Meret, her domineering, antagonistic mother-in-law. With Anne’s elderly neighbour Herlof’s Marte now knocking on her door, hoping to find refuge from similar charges, she can’t quite seem to remove herself entirely from the shadow of suspicion falling upon her either. Her eyes burn the same way as her mother’s did, Meret sombrely remarks, forewarning Absalon that one day he will find himself confronted with a choice between God and his wife.

Trapped within the confines of her husband’s home and subjected to her mother-in-law’s cruelty, Anne is set up as a victim of society – yet there resides an ambiguous power in her which underlies the spiritual mystery of Dreyer’s film.

Though it is apparent that the pastor has somewhat of a conscience, we can see in his rejection of Marte’s pleas for mercy that it is his passivity rather than any innate malice which lands him on the wrong side of these witch trials. Still, the same cannot be said of others in this town, who are spurred on by their need for a scapegoat to blame for their misfortune. The camera passes by spectators at Marte’s public torture as they lean forward in their seats, eager to see a confession drawn from her lips, and drawing strong parallels to another totalitarian regime occupying Dreyer’s homeland at the time of production. Just as he once aimed a critical lens at Joan of Arc’s political persecutors, here he angles his allegory towards the spread of Nazism, bitterly lamenting the grip of paranoid terror it held over Europe at large.

A slow, panning camera drifts past the faces of Marte’s interrogators, eager for her to break under physical and psychological pressure.
Scenes of brutal torture underscore the sadistic malevolence of man, stripping it of spectacle.

As such, Dreyer’s slow, severe storytelling is an impeccable formal match for his chilling indictment of authoritarianism. Set and costumes designs are as starkly minimalist as ever, using bare stone walls as backdrops and imposing geometric arches and columns upon interior spaces. His roving camerawork is equally rigorous, often combining panning and tracking shots to explore thoroughly blocked tableaux, and particularly inviting our curiosity as we follow Anne through a hall of pillars where she eavesdrops on Marte’s futile plea for mercy. It is no wonder then that Anne wishes to escape these oppressive, greyscale chambers, making the arrival of Absalon’s son Martin all the sweeter for his romantic companionship.

Among Dreyer’s strongest shots, tracking through the columns of this hall before framing Anne within the funnelled archways.
Stark, Gothic minimalism in Dreyer’s architecture, baring a stern facade.

Dreyer’s shift away from the harsh, Gothic architecture of the village and towards the natural scenery of Anne and Martin’s passionate affair is sharp, and further underscored by his deliberate intercutting between both locations. While Absalon visits the darkened home of a sick parishioner to deliver his last rites, we simultaneously join the lovers drifting down rivers and laying together in long grass, free from the rigid lines of their oppressive, austere home. Dreyer’s editing is not defined by quick rhythms here, but rather a slow, deliberate alternation between scenes, breaking through the dour monotony of emotionally restrained performances with warm smiles and tender affection. Still, even as Anne romantically poeticises about a tree on the riverbank, Martin’s guilt quietly impedes on their happiness.

“It is bowed in sorrow.”

“No, in longing.”

“In sorrow for us.”

“In longing for its reflection in the water. We can no more be parted than the tree and its reflection.”

Soft scenes of romance set among trees and rivers, contrasted against the harsh stone interiors of the village.

These lovers may be bound together emotionally, yet as Day of Wrath’s parallel editing so suggestively illustrates, they are also subject to a far more powerful bond metaphysically linking them back to Absalon. “Whosoever believeth shall live, though he die,” Absalon prays over his parishioner’s body, right before Dreyer cuts to Martin’s own pensive meditation on death.

“If we could die… together, here.”

“Why?”

“To atone for our sin.”

Absalon tends to a dying parishioner in this bleak frame, his meditations on death fatefully intercut with Anne and Martin’s.

It is not the disloyal son nor the unfaithful wife whom death shall ultimately visit though. Back at home Anne ponders aloud what their lives may look like if her husband were dead, and at that moment, we visit Absalon making his way through a vicious gale. He falters, proclaiming to have felt Death brush by him, before anxiously continuing his journey home. Dreyer is certainly no believer in witchcraft, and yet just as the climax of his later film Ordet is marked by the unexplained miracle of resurrection, there is a frightening ambiguity surrounding Anne’s apparently supernatural power. After derisively unleashing years of repressed anger over her stolen youth, she need only speak her desire aloud to strike him down.

“Therefore, I now wish you dead.”

A gale whips up on Absalon’s journey home, and death brushes by him.
A vicious turn in Anne’s character unleashes a bitter wish for death, revealing what may or may not be a hidden power as her wish immediately manifests in reality.

Frightened by her words made real, Anne escapes the thick shadows of Absalon’s office and runs outside, hoping to find Martin in those gorgeous landscapes which once hosted their passionate affairs. Now shrouded in mist though, both are rendered as silhouettes, drained of light and warmth. There is no more room for love in this relationship, and therefore no hope for Anne’s salvation. She is not some defiant individualist, seeing through the narrow beliefs of an unjust society, but simply a woman who has internalised its prejudice so deeply that she confoundedly professes to aiding the “Evil One.” After all, how else could such a terrible catastrophe be arbitrarily visited upon one of God’s holy servants?

Dark silhouettes in misty landscapes as Anne seeks salvation with Martin, only to find their romance dissipated.

Above all else, it is the haunting ambiguity of Dreyer’s Gothic fable which lingers long after he has faded from Anne’s teary, smiling face. Very gradually, our doubt in the existence of witchcraft is twisted into vague hesitancy, even as we remain sympathetic to her tribulations. Perhaps it was a supernatural manifestation of an emotional outburst, or maybe it truly was incredibly unfortunate timing. Regardless, Day of Wrath reserves its ire not for the women of this village, but those who shape reality around their own fear and cruelty. Where Anne is a sinner, a victim, or both, Dreyer’s greatest anxiety lies in a prejudiced culture beyond moral redemption, masquerading its darkest impulses as divine, heavenly will.

Dreyer holds on Anne’s teary, smiling face as she confesses her sin, submitting to the persecution and accusations levelled at her.

Day of Wrath is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

Alfred Hitchcock | 1hr 48min

In this story of serial killers and sinister secrets, there is an eerie motif of ballroom dancers twirling and waltzing in tight formations that Alfred Hitchcock frequently cuts to in the midst of thrilling developments. It is an image of duelling doubles, male and female, each of whom perform mirrored movements in perfect synchronicity, and yet serve no narrative purpose other than underscoring that darkly fated relationship at the centre of Shadow of a Doubt. “The same blood flows through our veins Charlie,” murmurs Uncle Charles to his niece, their inseparable connection drawn right down to their parallel names. Even while considering the wretched corners of the human psyche that Alfred Hitchcock has so frequently probed all through his career, perhaps this is his most disturbing – a twisted portrait of two Charlies, uncle and niece, locked in a secret seeping with subtext of incest, grooming, and sexual abuse.

A brilliant motif of doubles and dancers weaved all through this story in long dissolves.

Often just as fascinating as Hitchcock’s obsession with human perversities is the hyper-focused manner in which he invites us into them, as all it takes is a cutaway to a newspaper suspiciously stuffed in a pocket or an inscription on an emerald ring to place the same curiosity in our minds as that which his characters possess. Our gaze is often attached to these objects as intensely as we fixate on a suspected killer, in one scene slowly tracking in with unabashed curiosity on his profile until he turns to face us directly, and the camera suddenly freezes in terror. Therein lies the suspense of Hitchcock’s narrative and camerawork – we may submit to our own yearning for answers to the mystery of the Merry Widow Murderer, but as we see in the case of young Charlie, it is a dangerous and potentially deadly game.

A slow movement forwards, intrigued by Uncle Charles’ horrifying monologue, before he turns and looks us right in the eye, catching us right out.

In his crafting of such psychological darkness, Hitchcock digs down into expressionist lighting and mise-en-scene as its visual foundation, at one point trapping Charlie behind the shadows of stair bannisters cast up against the wall by low lights, imprisoning her in the aura of evil that her uncle has brought with him on this family visit. Though there is initially a sly sexual tension between them, their relationship evolves into one of menacing mistrust. “Who would believe you?” he teases her when she begins to consider turning him in, and the sexual abuse allegory grows even more potent when he tells her that it would “kill her mother” should she expose his lies.

Hitchcock at the top of his game when it comes to his expressionistic use of lighting and shadows, here shining a bright lamp over Charlie’s head while keeping the dangerous Uncle Charles in the dark.

Though more known for his pairings with Orson Welles, it is in this collaboration with Hitchcock that Joseph Cotten fully embraces the spotlight, shrewdly containing huge amounts of murderous rage beneath a thin veneer of respectability. With such concentration in his study of his subject’s guilty observations and reactions, Hitchcock turns Uncle Charles into one of the most compelling characters of both their careers, as a man so consumed by a densely nihilistic philosophy that the only rules of existence left to abide by are the depraved voices inside his own head.

“The world’s a hell. What does it matter what happens in it?”

He is no doubt a sad, lonely person, and for those caught up in his web of deceit and murder, the world becomes just as much of an isolating hell them as it is for him. It is especially after Charlie’s suspicions are confirmed by the inscription on the ring he has gifted her that she becomes more alienated than ever, as the camera is lifted up in a magnificent crane shot away from a close-up of that piece of jewellery into a wide with one smooth, deliberate camera movement, forcefully estranging her within the long shadows of a cavernous, gloomy library. And then, just as we have seen before, Hitchcock takes this moment to return to that motif of the perfectly synchronised dancers, and with a single crushing blow he delivers the paradox at the heart of Shadow of a Doubt – that infectious isolation which spreads from one to another through the disclosure of a dark, crushing secret, binding the two together in a complex dance of abuse and manipulation that no one else could possibly understand.

A remarkable crane shot pulling us away from Charlie into this dark, haunting wide, isolating her in the shadowy library.

Shadow of a Doubt is available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.