Italian filmmakers turned the devastating impact of Fascism and World War II on their country into cinematic art. Directors, including the openly gay Luchino Visconti, Roberto Rossellini, and Vittorio De Sica, saw the dreadful poverty, widespread civil disorder and disillusion, and from their individual visions emerged what is broadly called "Italian Neorealism." Visconti's Obsessione (1942), The Earth Trembles (1948); Rossellini's Rome: Open City (1945), Paisan (1946); and De Sica's Shoeshine (1946), Bicycle Thieves (1949) rejected conventional glamour, often used nonprofessional actors, and focused on the lives of the desperate and disenfranchised. Less well-remembered but equally influential in the decade following the end of the war is Giuseppe De Santis, whose Riso Amaro (Bitter Rice, 1949) is now available in a Criterion Collection DVD.
The operatic plot centers on the struggles of migrant women hired to harvest rice in the northern regions of the country during the brief season. Some are "documented," i.e., authorized by the government to work in the fields. Some, "illegals," are not. All, however, are willing, indeed eager for the backbreaking work.
Walter (handsome, virile Vittorio Gassman) and Francesca (Doris Dowling) have just stolen some jewelry from a hotel. They plan to board a train carrying peasant women to the Po Valley's rice fields. On the platform, Walter watches Silvana (the striking, sexy Silvana Mangano) dancing to a portable record player. He joins her in a hot jitterbug. But he is spotted and shot at by authorities. He escapes. On the train, Francesca, who has the jewels, meets Silvana, one of the workers. Francesca pretends she, too, wants to work in the fields, but she has no permit. Silvana becomes her mentor.
Both the "legals" and the "illegals" have been allowed to work in the paddies. Francesca and Silvana meet Marco (the magnetic Raf Vallone), a soldier soon to be discharged. He is attracted to Silvana, but she is not interested.
Towards the end of the season, Walter returns. He's abusive to Francesca, but charms Silvana, who is excited by his criminal life. He and some cohorts are planning to commandeer the trucks, fill them with the rice, and escape, intending to sell it on the black market. If they succeed, neither the landowners nor the women workers will get paid.
Silvana helps Walter by dancing, thereby creating a diversion so that he and his fellow thieves can drive the fully loaded trucks away without interference. But Francesca and Marco block Walter's plans. Francesca tells Silvana that Walter manipulated her, that he will abuse her as well, and that his "exciting" life is imaginary. The jewels they stole, for example, are fake.
In the silo, Walter and Marco shoot at each other. Then Silvana grabs Marco's gun and confronts Walter, who begins to charm and seduce her. Nonetheless, she sees him for who he really is and is overcome with shame. Will she shoot him? How will she atone for her own behavior? The intense, gripping finale answers these questions very movingly.
The film made a star of the relatively inexperienced Mangano (1930-89), who lights up the screen. She married the movie's producer, Dino De Laurentiis, and became a leading actress in Italy. Her forays into Hollywood (such as Circe opposite Kirk Douglas' Ulysses, 1954), were infrequent and unsatisfying. In Italy, however, she had great successes in the scandalous Anna (1951), playing a nun with a "shocking" past; Mambo and The Gold of Naples (1954); but raising her family took precedence over her career. Hence, she was overtaken by Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia Loren. Later, she was Tadzio's elegant mother in Visconti's haunting Death in Venice (1971) and played the Reverend Mother Ramallo in 1984's Dune.
Dowling (dubbed) is sympathetic. The charismatic Gassman (1922-2000), one of Italy's most acclaimed screen and stage actors, is riveting. Walter may be treacherous, but it's easy to see why Francesca and Silvana are drawn to him. Hollywood beckoned. He appeared opposite Elizabeth Taylor in Rhapsody (1954) and in War and Peace (1956) with Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda, but was not properly used. He was briefly married to Shelley Winters. Vallone (1916-2002) makes the good Marco interesting, and his own sex appeal rivals Gassman's. Vallone also worked in Hollywood and on American television, but his best films were Italian, notably De Sica's Two Women (1961).
De Santis, who co-authored Bitter Rice, subsequently wrote and directed other pictures, but nothing had the impact of this film. Riso Amaro, which can also be translated as Bitter Laughter, is the picture that inspired the classic memorable grape-stomping episode of I Love Lucy.
"Neorealism," always an imprecise term, faded as Italy grew more prosperous. Arguably the last film to fall into that category was Federico Fellini's The Nights of Cabiria (1957), although Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers (1960) and Two Women show that the lives of the less-fortunate continued providing artistic inspiration for two of the era's top directors.