Bitter Rice Review- By Michael Carlisle

Title: Bitter Rice
Year: 1949
Director: Giuseppe De Santis
Country: Italy
Language: Italian

Italian Neorealism (also known as The Golden Age of Italian Cinema) is a a national film movement characterized by stories set amongst the poor and the working class, filmed on location, frequently using non-professional actors. These films typically dissect the difficult economic conditions of Post-war Italy. By 1949, the movement had already taken the world by storm by stunning audiences and winning a variety of major awards. Part of a younger generation of filmmakers, Giuseppe De Santis sought to infuse Hollywood technique with Italian heart. 

Francesca (Doris Dowling) and Walter (Vittorio Gassman) are two-bit criminals in Northern Italy, and, in an effort to avoid the police, Francesca joins a group of women rice workers. She meets the voluptuous peasant rice worker, Silvana (Silvana Mangano), and the soon-to-be-discharged soldier, Marco (Raf Vallone) . The four characters become involved in a complex plot involving robbery, love, and murder.

Bitter Rice was one of the biggest world-wide box-office hits of Neo-Realism. It was a hit mainly because of the stylized noir story of doomed love, betrayal and crime which was interlaced with politically instructed marxist subtext. Giuseppe De Santis seemingly blended the fantastic with the realistic. The director never made his love of American Cinema a secret, and that was fairly clear onscreen. Unfortunately for some, the film's focus on melodrama remained at odds with its political agenda.

At times the film suffers from an excess of backstories. conflicting focuses and themes. Perhaps this is because Bitter Rice had no less than seven writers working on it. Regardless, it's hard to deny the grandeur of hundreds of women working and singing in the miserable rice fields. The picture is epic in scale as each frame is often filled with a mountain of information. The cinematographer should be applauded, because the imagery is quite powerful.

Silvana Mangano is incredible in this film. She was more beautiful than Ingrid Bergman, at a time when Bergman was Hollywood's biggest female star. Her character is a mess, yet the actor is so charismatic that we root for her anyway. Bitter Rice is a picture that you shouldn't pass up seeing.