Riso amaro (De Santis, 1949)

[Subbuteo]

Riso amaro (Bitter Rice) by Giuseppe De Santis

Watched this film today surely a landmark film of the postwar Italian neorealist movement - absolutely wonderful, gorgeous landscapes especially the rice-field scenes and the women in this film are drop dead stunners.

The transfer is simply wonderful. Highly recommended!

[LonHuber]

I own this release, and am quite happy with it. It took me a while to warm to the film itself, which I found less immediately accessible than De Sica's or Visconti's works from the same period. At first it just seemed like a jumble to me - a scene of De Sica-style neorealism is followed by one of crazy melodrama, then another more like a conventional crime film. But once I read a bit about the context and background, I started appreciating RISO AMARO. If what I read can be believed, the mix of Marxist polemic and crazy melodrama was intentional, reflecting some very real issues in Italian left/Communist/Socialist circles at the time. You could get whiplash trying to figure out the authorial point of view before recognizing that the author was suffering from whiplash himself, and representing it onscreen. Overall, many threads of Italian cinema, high-, middle- and low-brow, all meet in this film and would afterwards diverge, mutate, and rejoin in various forms for years after. It's variously neorealism, Marxist tract, operatic tragedy, gangster movie, social issue drama, romance, and documentary -- one astute friend of mine even pointed out that it's a proto-Women In Prison movie, and he's right!

[Scharphedin2]

This is a film that I have wanted to see for many, many years. I had no idea that it had been released, and just stumbled across a review of this (apparently gorgeous) disc at DVDTalk. Unfortunately it has since gone out of print, and I could not find a copy at Italian e-tailers, Xploited, or eBay.

If anyone can direct me to a place where I can purchase this, I would be much obliged.

[pro-bassoonist]

If anyone can direct me to a place where I can purchase this, I would be much obliged.

Unfortunately, unless you find a "forgotten" copy in a brick and mortar store somewhere in Italy that a friend or relative can pick up for you I think that you are pretty much out of luck. Riso Amaro, the Toto discs, Sedotta e Abbandonata, etc are no longer carried by Fox-Italia.

[Scharphedin2]

Thank you! That was very kind of you to track this down for me. Now to see, how and if I can get this e-seller to send the disc up to the cold north.

[kinjitsu]

The Cecchi Gori Home Video release of Riso amaro is available from The Internet Bookshop.