"The Sinking", this pioneering work is not only an adaptation of the famous American noir novel, but also not just a transfer of the novel scene to the Bocheng Plain in Italy. In Visconti's film we are in a very delicate transition, feeling the beginning of the transmutation of the general concept of situation.
In traditional action-image-based realism, objects and places have a non-committal reality, but in fact it is only a functional reality that depends on situational demands, even if these demands are at the same time poetic or dramatic. Like the emotional appeal of objects in Elijah Kazan's films, the situation therefore extends directly into action and passion.
On the other hand, since The Sinking, there has been a constant presence in Visconti's work, which manifests itself as another reality in the film, an autonomous material reality of objects and places.
So not only the audience, but the characters themselves turn their eyes to the things and people they see and hear, in order to burst into action and passion to interrupt a given routine.
In "The Sinking", when the male protagonist arrives, he uses a house owner's vision to see everything in front of him. This kind of inventory of the environment, objects, furniture and utensils is a constant in Visconti's works.
Therefore, the situation does not extend directly in the action, and he is no longer the perceptual-movement pattern in the realist work, he is first of all visual and auditory, full of meaning, and then the action is formed in this situation , begin to use the various components of the situation.
In this neorealism everything is real, but between the reality of the environment and the reality of the action, it is no longer an extension of movement, but a dream acquired through unconstrained sense organs general relationship.
Actions seem to float within the situation, rather than terminating or controlling the situation.
This is the source of Visconti's hallucinatory aesthetic.
View more about Obsession reviews
