Bitter Rice

Bitter Rice

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.

Bitter Rice
  • Bitter Rice

    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...

Extras

  • Giuseppe De Santis

    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.

  • Carlo Lizzani on BITTER RICE

    In this 2003 interview, BITTER RICE screenwriter Carlo Lizzani discusses the process of writing the script and working with director Giuseppe De Santis.