popcorninhell There's something about the way actress Doris Dowling stares piercingly into the eyes of the men and women who temporarily populate the Po Valley of northern Italy. Hardly a shrinking violet, the shrewdness she innately possesses drips from her sweated brow and subtle scowl. She's equal parts Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indeminity (1944) and Vivien Leigh in Streetcar (1951); both the criminal and the victim.Bitter Rice concerns the tragic entanglements of four people, two men and two women during the much celebrated time of the northern rice harvest circa 1949. Walter (Gassman) and Francesca (Dowling) are fugitives hiding from the fuzz with a thicket of stolen jewels. They find respite among the gaggle of women working the harvest and decide to stay just long enough to elude capture and steal a few bags of rice. The craven Walter finds himself attracted to a youthful rice weeder named Silvana (Mangano) who glamorizes trinkets of American largess including and especially pop music. As such, she immediately becomes drawn to Walter's bad-boy persona. Meanwhile Marco (Vallone) a disaffected war veteran attempts to court Silvana but finds conflict from all angles.The film is a jumble of compromised pastiche, referencing everything from pre-code crime and social problem films to stage musicals adapted to the screen. Yet it's all translated with neo-realist cinematography and wing-clipped melancholia. The love triangle for instance leaves the impression of a screwball comedy yet any humor or sexual tension is muted when compared to the paranoia shared by our two criminal leads. That very real tension is subsequently switched out with flashes of turf-war bravado pre-dating the American "teen" movies of the decade to come. There's an argument to be made that this quixotic mix of sensibilities amplifies the pettiness with which our characters seem doomed to repeat again and again. What's a girls obsession with American bubblegum when compared to the troubles of an army of harvesters working in the heat?Yet the way the movie gives equal weight to the melodrama as to the characterization keeps this film just out of place for the time; like bran of the grain just slightly askew. While constantly reminding its audience of the space, the time and the politics of the day, we don't see the characters as we should - tragic and vulnerable. Instead we see them petty, vain, and oafish; oblivious to their effect on the strangers that they harvest rice with. By combining the moral and economic difficulties of post-war Italy with western-style myopia there's certainly a pep to the plot but no characters to really root for.This tug-o-war between Italian neo-realism and Hollywood glitz and melodrama reaches its boiling point during the climax, which pits the four against each other in a slaughterhouse, under the cover of night. It's a mesmerizing scene that is brimming with symbolism, pathos, artful audience manipulation and suspense. Considered as a marriage of form and technique, the climax is a marvel though seen as a corruption, the film hammers home a deeply anti-consumerist message. One that not only highlights the seductive and prevalent nature of American-style capitalism but can even be seen as a commentary on Italy's 1948 General Election (which was seen by the west as a Cold War tipping point).Yet taken out of its political and historical context, Bitter Rice is at its heart a pulpy rural drama. One that can't help but be compared to films like The Big Sleep (1946) and lauded as the film that got Silvana Mangano on the fast track to international stardom. Yet despite its limitations, the image of Doris Dowling's fierce, icy glare is burned into memory and should be etched into cinematic consciousness in the same way Mangano's erotic boogie-woogie is.

Alex da Silva This film is set in the rice fields of Northern Italy where Doris Dowling (Francesca) has joined a band of illegal female workers. However, she is also carrying some stolen jewellery and she is biding her time until her partner-in-crime Vittorio Gassman (Walter) turns up, if he turns up at all. For Gassman is currently on the run from the police. Also working in the rice fields is Silvana Mangano who knows what Dowling is carrying….The story is interesting in that it is set somewhere different and shot on location. It also has a beginning that grips you. Unfortunately, the acting isn't particularly good and Dowling and Mangano portray a very unconvincing relationship with each other. Much praise is given to Silvana Mangano - I assume for being good looking in the eyes of some – and whilst she may like giving it jazz hands and exhibiting her dance routine, she needed to be given some acting lessons. Worst offender is the woman who breaks down screaming in the middle of the fields. What was that about? It's just hysterical nonsense. This scene comes after a rather amusing whipping scene.The film could have taken some interesting directions at the end, and that is what we watch for. I'm afraid we get let down by a predictably melodramatic ending full of clichés. I found it all rather disappointing after a good start to the film where we are drawn into a chase and given some tense scenes. The film is part of the Italian Neorealism genre but I didn't see any Italian ice-cream so it's not that realistic. And no-one said "Mamma mia!" or, thankfully, "Pronto!"

Robert J. Maxwell It's a good movie, though maybe not a great one. What makes it stand out is the fact that it managed to be made at all. I mean -- Italy? 1948? I don't know how some of the period directors turned out decently done films like this one, "Open City," "Paisan," and the rest of the neorealist examples. Maybe it helps to have no money. Well, let me take that back because I ought to know better.There are a lot of scenes of men and women hard at work in the rice fields of northern Italy, but the film captures little of the backbreaking quality of that work. Everybody seems to be enjoying herself, although there are arguments between the contract workers and the scabs. They overcome their differences and finally work together. A bit of Marx never hurt anyone.The thing is, rice planting, tending, and harvesting is horribly burdensome toil. You stand in mud up to your calves, bent over, working with your hands under the murk. And the film doesn't give us any of the exhaustion that follows. You get a better hint in "The Grapes of Wrath" when Pa Joad finishes his hamburger, stands up, stretches stiffly, and says something like, "You wouldn't think a couple hours of pickin' fruit would make a body ache so." The two principal women are the sullen but good Doris Dowling, who looks very much like her sister, Constance, Danny Kaye's inamorata in "Up In Arms." Dowling was of Irish ancestry. She had a long career, mostly in television, not being an exceptionally striking beauty.The other woman, driven by lust and greed but not unsympathetic, is Sylvana Mangano. She's a good enough actress and of considerable heft for an eighteen year old. I approve of the fact that she doesn't shave her arm pits. She has a majestic bosom that, if set free from its tight confines, would devastate the countryside, smothering cities, wiping out whole populations, and in the end denuding earth of all life. Those Michelangelos yet unborn would remain unborn.There's a sub plot involving the randy but fundamentally decent guy, Raf Vallone. I could never understand what women saw in him -- a large and hairy guy with a big bony face. Then there is the treacherous, lying thief, Vittorio Gassman, who switches women the way some men switch socks. He plans to undermine the entire enterprise at the expense of the workers. That slight groan you hear comes from Highgate Cemetery as Karl Marx struggles to roll over.I realize it's beside the point but I have to mention that I sat through the first half of this movie two generations ago, in one of those big movie palaces on Market Street in San Francisco, hoping to see a little flesh. And just about the time the ladies were rolling up their skirts the theater lurched forward, then backward, like a ride in an amusement park. The earthquake sent me dashing out into the street. For half a century I've been wondering how it all turned out.

olddiscs In the 1940s -early 1950s Italian Cinema was at it peak. neo-realism was the stlye The Great Italian Directors came of age: De Sica/Fellini/DeSantis & others the italian movie actresses came in to being :Magnani/Lollabridgida/Loren /Martinelli and most especially here SYLVANA MANGANO.. sultry/earthy/sexy/beautiful/tempestuous etc.. she & her directors created images which one cannot forget!!The scene in Bitter Rice where she dances solo has to rate with anything Rita Hayorth or Marilyn Monroe did in Hollywood!!wow exciting, sensuous & memorable; as a film ,Bitter Rice ,is a fine example of Italian films of that era.. an exciting depiction of working class Italy & the problems that they endured@ 1940s....So well done with a fine cast Raf Vallone/Vittorio Gassman & American film actress Doris Dowling in a memorable role as Francesca.. the scenes in the rice field with the working women are most effective for me..The plot gets a bit melodramatic with multiple shootings etc at end, & Manganos great suicide scene.. However her finest moment is in the rice field , in the rain, when she is raped(seduced) by the leacherous Walter (Gassmann) her reaction to that moment is incredible!! Great to see again & again !!