Digital, Cable and Satellite Television: Pick of the Day

LUCHINO VISCONTI'S Ossessione (6pm FilmFour) heralded an age of neo-realism in Italian cinema or, as film historian David Thomson put it, "against the zabaglioni lightness of Italian cinema, Ossessione was like a meat sauce". Visconti's tale is a superb version of James M Cain's novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice, a dark story of a labourer who is encouraged to murder his lover's husband after he turns up at the couple's roadside trattoria. Massimo Girotti and Clara Calamai star in roles formerly taken by John Garfield and Lana Turner. Although made in 1942, four years before the first American version, the film was not released in Europe until 1959.

Later, there's more classic cinema in the form of Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (11.35pm Sky Cinema), which stars Ingrid Bergman (right).