1949 | Italy | Fiction

Riso amaro (Bitter Rice)

  • Italian English 109 mins
  • Director | Giuseppe De Santis
  • Writer | Corrado Alvaro, Giuseppe De Santis, Carlo Lizzani, Carlo Musso, Ivo Perilli, Gianni Puccini
  • Producer | Dino De Laurentiis

STATUS: Released

This film is currently not available.   

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. 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.

Neorealism Italy Crime Melodrama Workers
Film Organizations
The Criterion Collection
DISTRIBUTION