L’ospite inatteso. Nietzsche e l’estetica del tragico in Ossessione di Luchino Visconti

The Unexpected Visitor. Nietzsche and the Aesthetics of the Tragic in Luchino Visconti’s Ossessione This article proposes an interpretation of Luchino Visconti’s Ossessione (1943) through the conceptual lens of Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy. By analysing the film through the categories of the Apollonian and the Dionysian, the study argues for its status as a modern refiguration of Attic tragedy. Ossessione articulates a philosophy of the tragic, in which the characters emerge as symbolic figures of an archaic myth centered on Dionysus. At the same time, the film serves as a site of aesthetic mediation in which the tragic paradigm is both embodied and rearticulated within modernity. In this respect, Ossessione constitutes a decisive moment in Visconti’s aesthetic project, exemplifying the cinematic figuration of myth, while simultaneously diverging from James M. Cain’s novel The Postman Always Rings Twice and from its more canonical cinematic adaptations.