Riso amaro/Bitter Rice (1949)

The Italian melodrama Riso amaro/Bitter Rice (1949) was a product of the Neo-Realism movement of the 1940s. The film was written and directed by Giuseppe De Santis and produced by Dino De Laurentiis for Lux Film. Bitter Rice was a commercial success in both Europe and America, thanks to the ‘shockingly’ sexy performance of Silvana Mangano, dressed in hotpants. The film also starred Raf Vallone, American actress Doris Dowling and a young Vittorio Gassman. The four become involved in a complex plot involving robbery, love, and murder.


Dutch postcard by Filmverhuurkantoor Centrafilm, Dordrecht. Photo: Lux Film Rome. Publicity still for Riso amaro/Bitter Rice (Giuseppe de Santis, 1949) with Silvana Mangano.


Dutch postcard by Centrafilm, Dordrecht. Photo: Vittorio Gassman and Silvana Mangano in Riso amaro/Bitter Rice (Giuseppe de Santis, 1949). Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.


Dutch postcard by Centrafilm, Dordrecht. Photo: Silvana Mangano in Riso amaro/Bitter Rice (Giuseppe de Santis, 1949). Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.


Dutch postcard by Centrafilm, Dordrecht. Photo: Doris Dowling and Raf Vallone in Riso amaro/Bitter Rice (Giuseppe de Santis, 1949). Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

Is Riso amaro a Neo-Realist film? 

At the time, Neo-Realism was about only 7 years old. Films like Roma Citta Aperta by Roberto Rossellini had taken the world by storm, and overwhelmed international audiences and festival juries. But the Neo-Realist films quickly changed in character and Riso amaro/Bitter Rice lead to a dispute among film critics about the sexualization of the lead character and the melodramatic presence of death and suicide in the film.

At IMDb, Debblyst explains: “Neo-Realist principles (i.e. no stars, mix of professional and non-professional actors, location-only shooting, rejection of ‘beauty’/classicism/romanticism, stressing on ‘ordinary’ people and ‘real-life’ themes) were being stretched: stars were joining in (including international ones, like Ingrid Bergman, or starlets like American Doris Dowling here), productions got bigger and more expensive, crews more professional, equipment more sophisticated, ‘ordinary’ people were being replaced by Olympic beauties (or do ordinary people EVER look like Silvana Mangano or Vittorio Gassman?), ‘ordinary’ characters were getting very complex, and real life was being traded by elaborate, far from realistic drama.”

Riso amaro begins at the start of the rice-planting season in northern Italy. Trying to escape the law, two small-time criminals, Francesca (Doris Dowling) and Walter (Vittorio Gassman), hide amongst the crowds of female workers heading to the rice fields of the Po Valley.

While attempting to board the train for the fields, the pair runs into Silvana (Silvana Mangano), a voluptuous peasant rice worker. Francesca boards the train with her, in an effort to avoid the police. Silvana introduces her to the planter's way of life. Francesca does not have a work permit, and struggles with the other ‘illegals’ to find a place on the rice fields. After initial resistance from documented workers and bosses, the scabs are allowed a place in the fields.

At the fields, Silvana and Francesca meet a soon-to-be-discharged soldier, Marco (Raf Vallone), who unsuccessfully tries to attract Silvana's interest. Toward the end of the working season, Walter arrives at the fields, intending to steal a large quantity of rice. Excited by his criminal lifestyle, Silvana becomes attracted to Walter. She causes a diversion to help him carry out the heist, but Francesca and Marco manage to stop Walter and his accomplices.

Francesca and Silvana face each other, armed with pistols; Francesca confronts Silvana and explains that she has been manipulated by Walter. In response, Silvana turns her gun toward Walter and murders him. Soon afterward, her guilt leads her to commit suicide. As the other rice workers depart, they pay tribute to her by sprinkling rice upon her body.



German collectors card. Photo: Lux / Schorchtfilm. Publicity still for Riso amaro/Bitter Rice (Giuseppe de Santis, 1949) with Silvana Mangano.


Belgian postcard by Nieuwe Merksemsche Chocolaterie, Merksem. Photo: Lux Film Rome. Publicity still for Riso amaro/Bitter Rice (Giuseppe de Santis, 1949) with Silvana Mangano.


German postcard by Netter's Star Verlag, Berlin. Photo: Lux Film Rome. Publicity still for Riso amaro/Bitter Rice (Giuseppe de Santis, 1949) with Silvana Mangano.

Is Riso amaro merely a shocker?

The Italian title of the film, Riso amaro, is based on a pun. The Italian word ‘riso’ can mean either ‘rice’ or ‘laughter’, 'riso amaro' can be taken to mean either ‘bitter laughter’ or ‘bitter rice’.

Lucia Bosé was the director's first choice for the role of Silvana. It wasn't until he met former Miss Rome Silvana Mangano by chance that he decided to cast her in the film. In the film, Silvana chews gum and dances the boogie-woogie in an American way in the film. With her character’s downfall director Giuseppe De Santis's seems to have intended to show his condemnation of the products of American capitalism.

Ironically it was Silvana who made the film one of the biggest box office hits of the Neo-Realism cinema. To the standards of 1949, Mangano's performance in the film was shocking. Her hotpants and voluptuous figure earned Riso amaro a lot of publicity, in particular in strongly Roman Catholic Italy. But Riso amaro has more qualities than just being a shocker.

W. Visser at IMDb: “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 Giuseppe 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.”

The film was selected as one of 100 Italian films to be saved, a collection of films that "changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978". The collection was established by the Venice Film Festival in collaboration with Cinecittà and curated by Fabio Ferzetti, with input from Gianni Amelio and other Italian film critics. Many of the films selected represent the ‘Golden Age’ of Italian cinema, which was manifested in the Neorealist movement.


Belgian postcard by Nieuwe Merksemsche Chocolaterie S.P.R.L., Merksem (Anvers). Photo: Lux Film, Rome. Publicity still for Riso amaro/Bitter Rice (Giuseppe de Santis, 1949) with Doris Dowling.


Dutch postcard by Centrafilm, Dordrecht. Photo: Lux. Doris Dowling and Raf Vallone in Riso amaro/Bitter Rice (Giuseppe de Santis, 1949).


Trailer Riso amaro/Bitter Rice (Giuseppe de Santis, 1949). Source: CG Entertainment (YouTube).

Sources: W. Visser (IMDb), Debbylyst (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

Raf Vallone

Athletic Italian actor Raf Vallone (1916 - 2002) was an internationally acclaimed film star, known for his rugged good looks.


French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, nr. 14 E/384.


French postcard. Photo: Studio Harcourt.


French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 972. Presented by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane'. photo: Sam Lévin.

Bitter Rice
Raffaele Vallone, known as Raf, was born in Tropea, Calabria, Italy in 1916. He was the son of a prominent lawyer and his aristocratic wife. Vallone studied law and philosophy at the University of Turin and entered his father's law firm. He played semi-professional soccer but never realized his dream of becoming a professional athlete. Subsequently, he became a sports reporter for L'Unità, then the official newspaper of the Italian Communist Party, and also a film and drama critic for the Gazzetta del Popolo. During the Second World War, Vallone served with the anti-Fascist resistance. His first film appearance was as a sailor in Noi vivi/We the Living (1942, Goffredo Alessandrini) starring Alida Valli, but Vallone was not interested in an acting career. Originally hired as a researcher on a film about labor unrest, Giuseppe de Santis cast him in 1948 as a respectable sergeant competing with no-good Vittorio Gassman for the love of Silvana Mangano in Riso amaro/Bitter Rice (1949, Giuseppe De Santis). De Santis called Vallone a 'natural actor', and Riso amaro became one of the landmark films of the postwar Italian neorealist movement. Many fans came to see the film solely on the strength of the now-famous production still of the buxom Mangano standing in the rice field wearing tight shorts and torn black stockings. The box office success propelled both Mangano and the handsome Vallone into international stardom, and he ended his journalism career.


Dutch postcard. Photo: Centrafilm, Dordrecht. Publicity still with Doris Dowling and Raf Vallone in the Lux production Riso amaro/Bitter Rice (1949, Giuseppe de Santis).


East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 1925. Retail price: 0,20 DM. Photo: publicity still with Simone Signoret for Thérèse Raquin/The Adultress (1953, Marcel Carné).


German postcard by UFA (Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft), Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 3065. Retail price: 25 Pfg. Photo: Arthur Grimm / CCC-Film / Herzog Film.

Cast as Jet-setting Playboy
After his spectacular film acting debut, Raf Vallone played a succession of roles as heroic rural types struggling for survival amidst the uncertainties of postwar Italian life. He starred in the neorealist Il Camino Della Speranza/The Path of Hope (1950, Pietro Germi) about the plight of illegal immigration, as experienced by a pair of Sicilian miners. That year he also starred in Il Cristo Proibito/Strange Deception (1950), the film directorial debut of novelist Curzio Malaparte, who also wrote the musical score. The film combines a standard revenge tale with a postwar reenactment of the first four books of the New Testament. Giuseppe De Santis directed him in another exercise in neorealism, Non C'e Pace Tra Girl Ulivi/No Peace Under the Oliver Tree (1950). Vallone was reunited with Silvana Mangano and Vittorio Gassman in the melodrama Anna (1951, Alberto Lattuada). He then started making films in French, German and Spanish too. Vallone co-starred with major actresses like Anna Magnani in Camicie Rosse/Red Shirts (1952, Franco Rosi), Sophia Loren in Il Segno di Venera/The Sign of Venus (1952, Dino Risi), Simone Signoret in Therese Raquin/The Adulteress (1952, Marcel Carné), Martine Carol in La Pensionnaire/The Boarder (1954, Alberto Lattuada), Michèle Morgan in Domanda di Grazia/Obsession (1954, Jean Delannoy), Maria Schell in Rose Bernd/The Sins of Rose Bernd (1957, Wolfgang Staudte) and Carmen Sevila in La Venganza/The Vengeance (1957, Juan Antonio Bardem). Some producers insisted upon casting him again and again as a jet-setting playboy, nattily attired in the latest fashions, a beautiful girl on each arm.


German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin-Charlottenburg, no. T 678. Photo: Arthur Grimm/CCC-Film/Herzog Film. Publicity still for Liebe/Love (1956, Horst Hächler).


German postcard by WS-Druck, Wanne-Eickel, no. 315. Photo: Gabriele / Schorcht.

A View From The Bridge
In the 1960’s, Raf Vallone achieved popularity with American audiences, starting with his supporting roles in the Oscar winning drama La ciociara/Two Women (1960, Vittorio De Sica) and the medieval epic El Cid (1961, Anthony Mann), both co-starring Sophia Loren. He also turned to the theatre, scoring a particular triumph in Paris in 1958 when he appeared in Peter Brook's production of Arthur Miller's A View From The Bridge. The role of Eddie, an Italian-American dockworker tormented by desire for his niece, was tailor-made for Vallone, and he reprised it to great effect in the film version, A View from the Bridge (1962, Sidney Lumet). Other roles in American films included The Cardinal (1963, Otto Preminger), The Secret Invasion (1964, Roger Corman), the biopic Harlow (1965, Gordon M. Douglas) starring Carroll Baker, and Nevada Smith (1966. Henry Hathaway) starring Steve McQueen. Among his European films were Phaedra (1962, Jules Dassin) starring Melina Mercouri, Volver a Vivir (1967, Mario Camus) and La Morte Risale A Ieri Sera/Death Took Place Last Night (1970, Duccio Tessari). During the 1970's he appeared in such resounding failures as The Kremlin Letter (1970, John Huston), Rosebud (1974, Otto Preminger), and like John Exshaw wrote in The Indepent: “a slew of trashy melodramas in which Vallone's perpetually pained expression was presumably unfeigned.” He was memorable though as the Mafia boss Altabani in the original The Italian Job (1969, Peter Collinson) starring Michael Caine. He also played many priests during his long career, culminating with the well-rounded portrayal of Cardinal Alberti in The Godfather: Part III (1990, Francis Ford Coppola). This priest, the confessor of mobster Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), becomes pope and is then murdered by the Mafia. After this role he began curtailing his film work. In 2001 Vallone published his autobiography, L'alfabeto della memoria. One year later he died in Rome. Raf Vallone was married to actress Elena Varzi from 1952 until his death in 2002. They had three children, two of whom are actors, Eleonora Vallone and Saverio Vallone.


German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin-Charlottenburg, no. V 118. Photo: Bavaria / Schorcht / Gabriele. Publicity still for Rose Bernd (1957, Wolfgang Staudte).


German postcard by Filmbilder-Vertrieb Ernst Freihoff, Essen, no. 224. Retail price: 10 Pfg. Photo: G.B. Poletto / Ufa.

Sources: John Exshaw (The Independent), Jon C. Hopwood (IMDb), Hal Erickson (Rovi), Wikipedia, Rovi, and IMDb.