Bitter Rice

Year: 1949
Genre: Drama
Directed: Giuseppe De Santis
Star: Vittorio Gassman, Doris Dowling, Silvana Mangano, Raf Vallone, Checco Rissone, Nico Pepe, Adriana Sivieri, Lia Corelli, Maria Grazia Francia
Production: Lux Film

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.

I'm dangerous, I swear it!

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.

And of course the USA never got
involved in Italian politics

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.

Final Grade: C