In the documentary, The Gleaners and I (2000), Agnès Varda professed her love for the human form while stooped over, at work or even rifling through a dumpster. Varda would have found much to love in Giuseppe De Santis’ 1949 melodrama, Bitter Rice, an overlooked gem that combines Italian neorealism with elements of noir.
Set in the rice fields of northwestern Italy, Bitter Rice tells the story of the mondine, scores of women who traveled each year from all over the country to assist in the harvest. According to the film’s opening voiceover monologue, only women had hands nimble enough and feet swift enough to plant and harvest the delicate rice crop. De Santis, fresh from his debut film Tragic Hunt, decided to make a movie about the mondine after witnessing the mass exodus of women returning home from the harvest. Struck by the scene, he decided to craft his next film using this milieu as its backdrop.
The story of Bitter Rice could have pulled from one of James M. Cain’s crime novels. Francesca (Doris Dowling) and Walter (Vittorio Gassman) are on the lam after stealing an expensive necklace from a fancy hotel. Looking to skip town and desperate, the pair comes to the Turin train station just as the mondine are flocking to trains departing to the villages where the rice is harvested. With the cops hot on their trail, the pair separates. Walter hands off the jewels to Francesca, who jumps a train and heads off to the rice fields. Along the way she encounters Silvana (Silvana Mangano), a busty and beautiful young woman who takes Francesca under her wing, but not without ulterior motives.
Resting somewhere between pulp fiction and the films of Di Sica or Rossellini, Bitter Rice combines the tropes of neorealism with elements of the potboilers coming out of Hollywood at the time. Yes, the story of Francesca and Walter is straight noir, but De Santis uses realistic settings for the backdrop of his story, especially in that opening train sequence. Using sweeping crane shots, De Santis shows the chaos and beauty of the Turin station as the mondine get ready to leave their families for weeks for days full of hard work. Even though the main storyline of Francesca, Walter and Silvana dominates Bitter Rice, the secondary story of the sisterhood of the mondine is equally important. Despite the backbreaking work, often ankle-deep in the rice paddies, the women maintain a high morale by singing and telling jokes. De Santis’ camera may make the work scenes somewhat lurid—not exactly what Varda had in mind about enjoying watching people bent over—but beautiful women in suggestive poses brings the film full circle back to Hollywood pulp.
None is more beautiful than the teenage Mangano in her debut role. Nearly bursting out of her clothes while suggestively smacking gum or shaking her hips to her portable turntable, Mangano plays the femme fatale who gets in between Walter and Francesca. According to one Italian critic, Mangano “reigns supreme in every shot of the film.” Mangano, who would later marry legendary producer Dino De Laurentiis (he also produced Bitter Rice), is at her best when striking a seductive pose or fighting off the advances of Marco Galli (Raf Vallone), a sergeant who is stationed in the village where the mondine work.
Via a series of double crosses, Walter convinces Silvana to help him and some other hoods in a heist of the rice harvest. Using the jewels (which are fake) and the promise of a future together to ensnare her, Walter convinces Silvana to turn against her mondine sisters so they can make off with the rice. Only Francesca and Sergeant Galli can stop them and Bitter Rice turns into a tense cat-and-mouse game by its tense climax.
Bitter Rice has a lot to offer, even if it’s difficult to pin down De Santis’ exact intentions. Even though it includes an incisive look at the working conditions for Italian women in the 1940s, there is enough sex and violence to please Mike Hammer fans. Bitter Rice may play like an exquisite fantasy, but there is just enough there to make the film feel a little too close to the truth.
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