Bitter Rice (Riso amaro, Giuseppe De Santis, 1949, Italy)
Free for students
New Restoration
Straddling the line between earthy melodrama and neorealism, Bitter Rice is one of the key films in Italian film history.
Film/Video Theater
Bitter Rice follows Silvana (Silvana Mangano) and Francesca (Doris Dowling) through the rice paddy fields of Northern Italy’s Po Valley. They are just two of the many underpaid and overworked women hired to work the upcoming harvest, but only Francesca is on the run from the law after stealing a necklace with her boyfriend Walter (Vittorio Gassman). When Walter arrives intent on stealing the harvest, the story quickly turns from social realism into a crime film with a love triangle at the center. In Italian with English subtitles. (109 mins., 4K DCP)
See the entire A Summer Abroad: International Film Classics lineup.