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Bitter Rice

Play trailer Poster for Bitter Rice 1950 1h 47m Drama Play Trailer Watchlist
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100% Tomatometer 8 Reviews 82% Popcornmeter 250+ Ratings
Francesca (Doris Dowling) and Walter (Vittorio Gassman) are a criminally inclined couple who accidentally part ways while on the run from the law. Luckily, Francesca falls in with a group of peasant women and opts to hide out among them as they toil in the rice fields of the Po Valley. To her surprise, in her cover she discovers a simple but satisfying life filled with hard work and friendship. So when Walter resurfaces, their reunion doesn't go quite as he had expected.
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Bitter Rice

Critics Reviews

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Richard Brody The New Yorker 12/05/2022
Fuses the class-based politics—and the on-location authenticity—of neorealism with a smoldering romantic melodrama. Go to Full Review
Dennis Harvey 48 Hills 01/22/2024
Bitter Rice made neorealism popular by adding bombshell Silvana Mangano to the minestrone... Go to Full Review
Nicholas Bell IONCINEMA.com 10/14/2020
4/5
De Santis creates something a bit stranger with this hybrid, a darker examination of sex and violence from the perspective of two central female characters... Its social commentary seems incredibly progressive. Go to Full Review
Eric Melin Scene-Stealers.com 05/31/2016
3/4
There is so much to be learned from Bitter Rice, even today. It is a perfect surprise, proving how important and how much fun it is to discover older movies with fresh eyes. Go to Full Review
Josef Braun Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Alberta) 02/01/2016
Shameless eye candy with a social message. Go to Full Review
Austin Trunick Under the Radar 01/16/2016
7.5/10
[A] femininely-charged setting sets Bitter Rice apart from the masculine, urban underworlds typically inhabited within the noir genre. Go to Full Review
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Audience Reviews

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Isa B Jan 14 The camera work is impressive in Bitter Rice. The screenplay is great as is the acting. There was a team of writers for this film, so that can explain the well-written screenplay. They certainly wrote well together. Afterall, Bitter Rice was nominated for Best Story in the 1950 Academy Awards. Silvana can be seen with her eyes open right before she closes them, even though she had been deceased since the previous night. It is hard to imagine how such a glaring mistake made the final cut. Even still, Bitter Rice is a great film with a strong ending. I recommend. 91/100 See more 09/13/2021 Must see Italian realism, with unique scenes of the seasonal rice harvesting workforce. See more 02/12/2021 From the show stopping extended opening sequence, in which our criminals, stolen necklace in hand, attempt to evade the police at their heels by blending into the throng of departing female workers at the train station, it's obvious we're in the hands of an energized visual storyteller, one with empathy to spare. Bitter Rice is both a beautiful and respectable black and white neorealist portrait, and a fully functional crackling, sexy crime drama. As it takes its plot to the watery fields themselves for the duration of the story, it becomes apparent that Bitter Rice is at once "a film" and "a movie". See more 02/25/2015 Starts out great with a cool set-up and premise, interesting characters, and fantastic camera work. Unfortunately it descends into schlock by the end and we've got a cheesy shoot out between the two main characters. See more 08/22/2013 Interessante l'ambientazione nelle campagne con le mondine, il resto della trama pero' non e' cosi' forte e inoltre sembra tutto un po' prevedibile. See more 02/06/2013 A quintessential film of Italian neorealism of postWWII, though it became an international sensation due to the overt sex appeal and shot of breasts of Silvana Mangano, then only 19. See more Read all reviews
Bitter Rice

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Movie Info

Synopsis Francesca (Doris Dowling) and Walter (Vittorio Gassman) are a criminally inclined couple who accidentally part ways while on the run from the law. Luckily, Francesca falls in with a group of peasant women and opts to hide out among them as they toil in the rice fields of the Po Valley. To her surprise, in her cover she discovers a simple but satisfying life filled with hard work and friendship. So when Walter resurfaces, their reunion doesn't go quite as he had expected.
Director
Giuseppe De Santis
Producer
Dino De Laurentiis
Screenwriter
Giuseppe De Santis, Carlo Lizzani, Mario Monicelli, Gianni Puccini
Distributor
Lux Film Distributing Corporation
Genre
Drama
Original Language
Italian
Release Date (Theaters)
Sep 18, 1950, Original
Release Date (Streaming)
Dec 15, 2015
Runtime
1h 47m
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