Although made before the term neorealism was coined, Visconti's Ossessione is recognized as the first true neorealist film: in 1942, it was to depose the conventions of polite cinema and influence a generation of filmmaking to come. In Ossessione-an adaptation of James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice-an unsettling, ambiguous passion replaced the false purity of screen romance in the so-called "white-telephone" films that were still the norm in the Italian cinema; and dust, poverty, and the desperate will to survive were reinstated to their rightful place in the narrative. Encountering censorship in Fascist Italy, the film was shown in a badly cut version; copyright problems further inhibited the film's postwar circulation, so that Ossessione has remained a relatively obscure masterpiece. Visconti, transposing the James M. Cain novel to a squalid trattoria in the Po Valley, plays it for a deft mixture of dour authenticity and studied narrative suspense. Moreover, "neorealism" does not imply gritty realism; Ossessione, Visconti's first film, is a work of extraordinary beauty, in which the influence of Renoir can be detected and appreciated in the merging of character and landscape, and the stunning lyricism of the camerawork. The opening shots alone register Ossessione among the great works of cinema, shots looking out the front of a bus, going down a dusty road, seemingly to nowhere. We are introduced to Gino (Massimo Girotti), the drifter, by way of his hefty back, and we watch him from an increasingly high angle shot, still from the back, enter the trattoria, in whose kitchen he meets Giovanna (Clara Calamai). We first see his face when she does, a moment of startled passion. Calamai plays Giovanna as a portrait of female despair and desire-not the James M. Cain variety of smoldering sexuality but a smoldering soul-and Visconti has her tell her story from a lone, small chair in an empty corner of the room. It is the first of a series of lonely compositions that will reflect and entrap the haunted lovers.