Directed by Giuseppe De Santis • 1949 • Italy
Starring Silvana Mangano, Vittorio Gassman, Doris Dowling
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.
This 2007 documentary by Carlo Lizzani, the primary screenwriter of BITTER RICE and a frequent collaborator of Giuseppe De Santis’s, covers the career of the director, especially his groundbreaking work in the early days of Italian neorealism.
In this 2003 interview, BITTER RICE screenwriter Carlo Lizzani discusses the process of writing the script and working with director Giuseppe De Santis.
