In an effort to escape the law, two small-time thieves, Francesca (Doris Dowling) and Walter (Vittorio Gassman), hide among the crowds of female workers heading to the rice paddies in the Province of Vercelli in the upper reaches of Piedmont in the Po Valley. When all is said and done these two women will have swapped places, for better and much worse. Millicent Marcus, Professor Millicent Marcus. Bitter Rice is a 1949 Italian film made by Lux Film, written and directed by Giuseppe De Santis. Princeton University Press, 1986 - Performing Arts - 443 pages. The other has film noir, Francesca, and America. 1949 | Italian Neorealism | 108 minutes | Italian with English subtitles. The first 10 minutes of Bitter Rice more or less establishes what the movie’s going to be: sexy and noir-inflected, with more docu-realistic footage of rice cultivating than the average pulpy crime picture. I Vitelloni (1953) Fellini, generally, is not considered within Neorealism movement. Bitter Rice was entered into the 1949 Cannes Film Festival. Her downfall illustrates director Giuseppe De Santis's condemnation of these products of American capitalism. Many of the films selected represent the "Golden Age" of Italian cinema, which was manifested in the neorealist movement.[6]. As it takes its plot to the watery fields themselves for the duration of the story, it becomes apparent that Bitter Rice is at once “a film” and “a movie”. But it’s also about the wonder that is Mangano, as her Silvana chews gum, breathes heavy, and teases men. Though it shares some characteristics with noir, Bitter Rice comes straight out of the original Italian post-WWII neorealist movement. The Italian title of the film is based on a pun; since the Italian word riso can mean either "rice" or "laughter", riso amaro can be taken to mean either "bitter laughter" or "bitter rice". Although Bitter Rice did not win any awards, it was nominated for the 1950 Academy Award for Best Story and entered into the 1949 Cannes Film Festival. In response, Silvana turns her gun on Walter and kills him. With Vittorio Gassman, Doris Dowling, Silvana Mangano, Raf Vallone. Bitter Rice is both a beautiful and respectable black and white neorealist portrait, and a fully functional crackling, sexy crime drama. [4] The film was nominated for Best Story in the 1950 Academy Awards. Both a socially conscious look at the hardships endured by underpaid field workers and a melodrama tinged with sex and violence. Few who see it will forget it soon. In an interview included on Criterion’s new Bitter Rice Blu-ray, screenwriter Carlo Lizzani says that “no neorealist film belongs to any one genre,” and this film is a clear case in point. De Santis and his producer Dino De Laurentiis had a dual purpose in making a film noir with two femmes fatale. In it, his collaborators point out how skillfully the director wove social issues into what were essentially mainstream entertainments. Even in the sociopolitically minded world of Italian neorealism, star quality mattered. In one of the film’s many exquisite long tracking shots, De Santis and cinematographer Otello Martelli move the camera slowly along the side of a passenger train’s sleeping car, catching passengers waking up, getting ready for the day, and looking out their window at a rising commotion. Films such as Visconti's La terra trema (The Earth Will Shake , 1947), De Sica and Zavanttini's Both a socially conscious look at the hardships endured by underpaid field workers and a melodrama tinged with sex and violence. During planting season in Northern Italy’s Po Valley, an earthy rice-field worker (Teorema’s seductive Silvana Mangano) falls in with a small-time criminal (Il sorpasso’s Vittorio Gassman) who is planning a daring heist of the crop, as well as his femme-fatale-ish girlfriend, played by the Hollywood star Doris Dowling (The Lost Weekend). It was a product of the Italian neorealism style. It’s much pulpier than textbook neorealism, but it also feels earthier and more grounded than your typical noir. De Santis loads up on scenes of the workers lounging around their barracks in low-cut negligees, and he includes lots of footage of women bending over to plant rice. "Cento film e un'Italia da non dimenticare", Un apprezzato professionista di sicuro avvenire, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bitter_Rice&oldid=965803925, Articles containing Italian-language text, Wikipedia articles with WorldCat-VIAF identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 3 July 2020, at 14:24. As you have probably figured out by now, Criterion did not steer me wrong. The other has film noir, Francesca, and America. As the other rice workers depart, they pay tribute to her by sprinkling rice upon her body. Bitter Rice is a story about crime, class conflict, and backbreaking labor. Great boobs too. Produced by Dino De Laurentiis, starring Silvana Mangano, Raf Vallone, Doris Dowling and Vittorio Gassman, Bitter Rice was a commercial success in Europe and America. [5] The collection was established by the Venice Film Festival in collaboration with Cinecittà and curated by Fabio Ferzetti, with input from Gianni Amelio and other Italian film critics. Neorealism represents the single major effort since Dante to give the Italian spoken language a written form, a process intended both as a ... (Bitter Rice, 1949 ) were relatively successful at the box office. Both a socially conscious look at the hardships endured by underpaid field workers and a melodrama tinged with sex and violence, this early smash for producer extraordinaire Dino De Laurentiis and director Giuseppe De Santis is neorealism with a heaping dose of pulp. It’s a little one-dimensional, dealing with the fairly predicable machinations among Francesca, Silvana, Marco, and Walter as the latter plans a rice heist. Francesca does not have a work permit, and struggles with the other "illegals" to find a place on the rice fields. The first opens the film: It’s a shot that starts with a radio announcer looking directly into the camera to explain the history and culture of rice pickers, before the camera does a slow 360-degree pan around the train station to show workers singing, families separating, and a pair of cops hunting for the man and woman who just stole a valuable jeweled necklace. Francesca and Silvana face each other, armed with hand-guns. Even when she’s out in the rice paddies with the other mondinas, she’s a vision, with her torn hose and bare feet. Yet another simple and touching film from the Italian neorealism era: 'Bitter Rice' is a beautiful movie that was not only way ahead of its time (in terms of empowerment and focus of women) but also important when considering the message of cooperation in times of struggle and a distant cry for help during the post-WWII era. The Italian title of the film is based on a pun; since the Italian word riso can mean either "rice" or "laughter", riso amaro can be taken to mean either "bitter laughter" or "bitter rice". Bitter Rice (Italy / De Santis) (first-time watch) Two women and two cultures intertwined. The film was also selected as one of 100 Italian films to be saved, a collection of films that "changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978". Tragedy turns out to be the fruit of greed in the best-known film of Giuseppe De Santis (Under the Olive Tree), whose earthy saga of female migrants working in the fertile rice fields of the Po Valley is a hybrid of neorealism and Tinseltown melodrama. Bitter Rice (Italian: Riso Amaro) is a 1949 Italian film made by Lux Film, written and directed by Giuseppe De Santis. She causes a diversion to help him carry out the heist, but Francesca and Marco manage to stop Walter and his accomplices. Although Simoneschi voiced over Mangano's speaking lines, Mangano provided her own singing voice. (Taken … Produced by Dino De Laurentiis, starring Silvana Mangano, Raf Vallone, Doris Dowling and Vittorio Gassman, Bitter Rice was a commercial success in Europe and the United States. Post-neorealism mixed with noir and mélo. The main locations are Tenuta Selve in Salasco and Cascina Veneria in Lignana. It was a product of the Italian neorealism style. In the film, the character Silvana represents the allure of behavior modeled in American films, such as chewing gum and boogie-woogie dancing. Francesca gets help from Silvana, who figures out the fugitive’s secret immediately, and at times uses it against her. Criterion’s disc adds an hour-long documentary about the director, who’s an often overlooked figure from the era of Visconti, Roberto Rossellini, and Vittorio De Sica. Bitter Rice During planting season in Northern Italy’s Po Valley, an earthy rice-field worker (Silvana Mangano) falls in with a small-time criminal (Vittorio Gassman) who is planning a daring heist of the crop, as well as his femme-fatale-ish girlfriend, played by the Hollywood star Doris Dowling. At work in the fields, Silvana and Francesca meet a soon-to-be-discharged soldier, Marco (Raf Vallone), who unsuccessfully tries to attract Silvana's interest. 1949’s Bitter Rice is a provocative pulp disguised as a crime drama through an Italian neorealism lens. (It also landed her a husband. One has neorealism, Silvana, and Italy. Vittorio Gassman, Doris Dowling, Silvana Mangano, Raf Vallone (in Italian w/subtitles). It’s definitely more fun than most neorealistic works, pitting its characters against each other as they jockey for power, shelter, and affection. Bitter Rice doesn't quite reach the lofty neorealist summit where masterpieces like Roberto Rossellini's Germany Year Zero (1948) and Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves (1948) reside, but it delivers high-octane drama, interesting sociology, and resourceful cinema. "Bitter Rice" was one of the biggest world-wide box-office hits of Neo-Realism. Both a socially conscious look at the hardships endured by underpaid field workers and a melodrama tinged with sex and violence. Francesca confronts Silvana and explains that she has been heartlessly manipulated by Walter. Produced by Dino De Laurentiis, starring Silvana Mangano, Raf Vallone, Doris Dowling and Vittorio Gassman, Bitter Rice was a commercial success in Europe and the United States. The acting in neorealism is low-key and the moments of drama come from the day-to-day struggles of its characters, not from archetypes like the femme fatale. Their intention was partly noble: to record the lives of these hard-working women, who form a sisterhood and a society even while being exploited by bosses and unions. Bitter Rice (Italian: Riso Amaro [ˈriːso aˈmaːro, ˈriːzo -]) is a 1949 Italian film made by Lux Film, written and directed by Giuseppe De Santis. The sex appeal of Bitter Rice probably had a lot to do with the movie getting enough attention in America to land an Oscar nomination for what was then called “Best Story.” (Today it would be “Best Original Screenplay.”) In truth, Bitter Rice’s story is its weakest element. The film's sets were designed by the art director Carlo Egidi. In fact, Bitter Rice is an extraordinary combination of all the things listed above. The film begins at the start of the rice-planting season in northern Italy. One of their grandchildren is Food Network star Giada De Laurentiis.). The reason for its success wasn't exactly in the depiction of the lives of poor peasant women who worked under harsh conditions in rice plantations in rural Italy -- this isn't the theme of "Bitter Rice", it's just its background. Then the camera continues out into a dusty patch of train yard, where a group of migrant workers have gathered around Mangano’s character (also named Silvana) as she dances the boogie-woogie. There are two sides to Bitter Rice. [2] In addition, Silvana was considered by many audiences to be overly sexualized. Bitter Rice (1950): Italian Neo-Realism with Erotic Silvana Mangano February 27, 2012 by EmanuelLevy In “Bitter Rice” (“Riso Amaro”), a landmark film of the Italian neorealist movement, the gorgeously looking Silvana Mangano portrays a woman named Silvana, working in the Po Valley rice … Directed by Giuseppe De Santis. 3 Reviews. Soon afterwards, her guilt leads her to commit suicide. Pop culture obsessives writing for the pop culture obsessed. But the affect of the potboiler plot and all the exposed flesh is that Bitter Rice holds the audience’s attention even as De Santis is passing along valuable information about labor contracts and agriculture. As Pasquale Iannone's essay that is included the new Criterion Blu-ray details, Bitter Rice was not the first Italian film to attempt such a juxtaposition. Silvana’s intro is actually the second extended take in Bitter Rice. During planting season in Northern Italy's Po Valley, an earthy rice-field worker falls in with a small-time criminal who is planning a daring heist of the crop, as well as his femme-fatale-ish girlfriend. To escape the law, Francesca and Walter, two small-time thieves, hide in the field with the female workers. It was a product of the Italian neorealism style. Francesca and Silvana live, work, laugh, and cry together, but they also find themselves on opposite sides of a labor dispute (which, in one memorable scene, they argue by singing their complaints back and forth to each other in the field), and they compete for the attention of a soldier named Marco (Raf Vallone) and for the returning Walter. As a director may … Mangano’s physical splendor is front-and-center throughout the film, whether she’s hiking up her skirt while dancing or nuzzling up against one of her hunky men, whose hands always seem to brush against her chest on their way up to her face and hair. It was a product of the Italian neorealism style.… Bitter rice (DVD) : MPAA rating: Not rated.During planting season in Northern Italy's Po Valley, an earthy rice-field worker falls in with a small-time criminal who is planning a daring heist of the crop, as well as his femme-fatale-ish girlfriend. 1949’s Bitter Rice is a provocative pulp disguised as a crime drama through an Italian neorealism lens. This sexualization and the melodramatic presence of death and suicide in the film cause it to diverge from typical Italian neorealism.[3]. Info. Bitter Rice Riso amaro (Bitter Rice) is my favorite italian movie from the past. Francesca boards the train with Silvana, who introduces her to the planters' way of life. But it’s pointless to deny that Bitter Rice is also meant to be heart-stoppingly sexy. During planting season in Northern Italy's Po Valley, an earthy rice-field worker falls in with a small-time criminal who is planning a daring heist of the crop, as well as his femme-fatale-ish girlfriend. The film was shot on location in the countryside of Vercellese. De Laurentiis was married to Mangano from 1949 to 1988. And when Italy’s other neorealist filmmakers see Bitter Rice, they will take it as a betrayal of truth and the political. While attempting to board the train for the fields, the pair runs into Silvana (Silvana Mangano), a peasant rice worker. Vittorio Gassman and Doris Dowling play the couple—Walter and Francesca—who in those opening minutes separate to elude capture, with the latter hiding among the women shipping out to the paddies. And yet, watching Bitter Rice, at times it feels like the situation was exactly the opposite. Toward the end of the working season, Walter arrives at the rice farm and becomes involved in a plot to steal a large quantity of rice. Produced by Dino De Laurentiis, starring Silvana Mangano, Raf Vallone, Doris Dowling and Vittorio Gassman, Bitter Rice was a commercial success in Europe and the United States. When all is said and done these two women will have swapped places, for better and much worse. The film begins during the start of the rice-planting season in the Po Valley in Italy. One has neorealism, Silvana, and Italy. Even in the sociopolitically minded world of Italian neorealism, star quality mattered. Two criminals on the run end up working in a rice field and decide to recruit other workers for their next robbery. This was the actress’ first major role, and it justifiably made her a star. The film, which tells the stories of the seasonal workers of rice (Mondine) contains many elements of the neorealist rules: first of all the approach in documentary style and the use of real workers as secondary actors. Italian neorealism (Italian: Neorealismo) is a style of film characterized by stories set amongst the poor and working class, filmed on location, frequently using nonprofessional actors. Bitter Rice. That’s why Giuseppe De Santis’ sweaty, grubby 1949 drama Bitter Rice introduces its statuesque star, 18-year-old actress Silvana Mangano, with a flourish worthy of a Marilyn Monroe or a Sophia Loren. De Santis, however, mixes Neorealism … Italian neorealism never formed a coherent movement or group. The movement known as neorealism lasted seven years, generated only twenty-one films, failed at the box office, and fell short of … De Santis used a real social issue as an opportunity to glide his camera along strikingly lit piles of grain, and to photograph some of the most beautiful faces and bodies he could find. Excited by his criminal lifestyle, Silvana becomes attracted to Walter. 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