New Arrival Bitter Rice (#792)

During planting season in Northern Italys 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.

Film Info

• Italy
• 1949
• 109 minutes
• Black & White
• 1.33:1
• Italian
• Spine #792

BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• Giuseppe De Santis,a 2008 documentary by screenwriter Carlo Lizzani
• Interview with Lizzani from 2003
• Trailer
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: An essay by critic Pasquale Iannone

  New cover by Ken Laager