I had seen the Italian neo-realist film “Bitter Rice” a few times over the years, but New York City’s Film Forum will soon revive it, starting on January 30, and I felt it was time to take another critical look.
“Bitter Rice” (1949), directed by Giuseppe De Santis, focuses on a large group of working-class Italian women who travel every summer to the rice fields of the Northern Italy’s Po valley for about 40 days to pick and plant the rice crop. They live in noisy close quarters, sleeping on straw-filled mattresses after an extremely arduous workday. However, though the film provides more than a bit of Visconti De Sica and Rossellini’s neorealist aesthetic in its depiction of the women working in the fields, engaging in bouncy camaraderie in the barracks, and struggling with the boss over a labor contract, it also draws much influence from Hollywood conventions.
From the introduction of a voluptuous Silvana (Silvana Mangano), exuding indolent sexuality and vitality in a star-making role as she dances to the music from her portable gramophone, Hollywood elements co-exist here side by side with neorealism. The film acts as a crime melodrama, a romance, an evocation of working-class Italian life, and a plea for social justice. It is pulpy—containing shoot-outs; a sane, decent, low-keyed hero, Marco (Raf Vallone); and a self-involved, unredeemable, evil villain, Walter Granata (Vittorio Gassman), who exploits women and wants to steal rice from the workers; elements of soap opera; and a happy ending after all the angst and tragedy.
It is beautifully shot, with tracking shots and long shots of the women at work in the fields and some fluid crosscutting in the final scenes where the rice crops is almost flooded.
The narrative is captivating, even though the transformed heroine, Francesca (American actress Doris Dowling), also suddenly finds a sense of community among the workers after being in thrall and abjectly doing the bidding of Walter. Still, in contrast to Silvana who is beguiled by visions of wealth and a new life, Francesca begins to understand who Walter is and what makes a person worth loving. And even though Silvana may be hungry for escape from her lot and willing to commit crime, she is not without some semblance of conscience.
Even the communal sequences in “Bitter Rice” at moments feel inflated like musical numbers. However, the film holds one’s attention. Its mixture of Mangano’s eroticism, its social conscience, and formal skill make it worth reviving.
