Arroz Amargo

Although its mold of 1949 appears somewhat melodramatic today, the black and white 'Riso Amaro' (= Italian for 'Bitter Rice') surely ranks among the classics in film history.

This very Italian product by Guiseppe de Santis shows a pretty ordinary crime story, excellently interwoven with an impressive decor of harsh season labor in the rice-fields of Northern Italy. The thousands of women, up to their ankles in the water, breaking their backs in the burning sun to earn a few bucks, make a truly great setting.

'Riso Amaro' has been labeled as 'neo-realism'. Another issue worth mentioning is its female lead Silvana Mangano, ex miss Rome. To the standards of 1949 miss Mangano's performance in this film was shocking. This earned 'Riso Amaro' a lot of publicity, in particular in strongly Roman Catholic Italy.

First saw Bitter Rice in 1949 and it has haunted me for 51 years. Recently rented it (2000) and it's still compelling. The verrismo genre was new at the time; in 2000 it doesn't have the same impact that it did when Open City, Bicycle Thief, La Strada, et al were all showing at about the same time, and showing us that there was a true, artistic alternative to Hollywood pap.

The then 18-year old Silvana Mangano's earthy performance will endure forever. My only memory from 1949 was of her working and chanting in the rice fields. And her doing a sensual Lindy with Vittorio Gassman. Those scenes were still compelling, half a century later.

I had heard very much about this film and particularly about Silvana Mangano's very sexy presence before finally seeing it, and was rather disappointed. Silvana is like a young Ingrid Bergman but already fallen in advance in the trap of Italian neorealistic temptation to vulgarity - she is outrageously vulgar, although innocent, while the other actress, Doris Dowling's acting, is so much better. Vittorio Gassman is very young here and gives a virtuoso performance as the villain, while Raf Vallone, vying with him in villainy, turns out ultimately sympathetic after all. The strength of the film is in its dramatic quality, the drama is almost operatic in constantly more striking effects, and all the scenes in the rice magazine are a joy to behold for the cineast. The film is slightly outdated today, the working conditions and routines of the rice field workers are a bit obsolete in their leftist proletarian tendencies, but it's a great drama and film. Silvana Mangano was only 19 at the time, this film made her a star forever, but with time it becomes more obvious that it is Doris Dowling's film more than hers.

Despite the fact that this film isn't available with English subtitles, (french is the closest!) it isn't so difficult to follow, and it is a satisfying experience. It comes across as a realistic portrayal of life in the rice fields of Italy, and is undoubtedly well-made with a haunting, natural quality about the whole production. Some of the scenes tend to be a bit overdrawn, and samey, but this doesn't detract from the overall intensity which is helped in no small part by the acting. It's quite clear that professional actors were used alongside non-actors, and this adds a certain poignant interest to the proceedings. The best performance is given by that seriously underrated actress from the USA - Doris Dowling, and it makes it all the more difficult to understand why she didn't have a far more high profile career in her own country. For fans of continental cinema in general, this is well worthy of interest.

Riso Amaro is bizarrely and wonderfully paradoxical: a movie that decries and deconstructs Hollywood-style escapism at every turn, and ,yet, is itself as pure an opiate for the masses as is known to Italian cinema.

The closest comparison that occurs to me is Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West. Both fetishize the technical and narrative magic of classic American films, the boundless optimism of the American dream that only soaring crane shots and panoramic vistas filled with casts of thousands (or at least a few dozen) can convey. Both fondly revisit every last genre movie cliche that can be crammed in edgewise. Yet, both are the work of foreigners asserting their alien and alienated status.

If your sensibility tends to dialectical Marxism, view Bitter Rice as a fascinating demonstration and critique of lumpen-proletariat "double-consciousness". If you could care less about such things, dig Silvana Mangano and Vittorio Gassman doing a rhumba, or the lovely exploited riceworkers hiking their skirts above their thighs and wading towards a watery catfight with non-union laborers ---or all the other delirious and visionary standout sequences that add up to Gone With the Wind as shot by Sam Fuller. Amazing stuff.

In a perfect world, this film would be available in the USA. It isn't at the moment. Slap some subtitles on it somebody, please!