Mon 25 Jan 2021 08.00 EST
The first scene in Giuseppe De Santis’ 1949 film Riso Amaro (Bitter Rice) is at Turin train station. Waves of women, of all ages, make their way across the tracks to board a train for Vercelli and 40 days of work as seasonal rice paddy workers known as
mondine. Also in the throng is petty thief Walter (Vittorio Gassman) and his accomplice, Francesca (Doris Dowling), who are on the run from the police after stealing a necklace. Having tracked the waves of women, the camera chases the couple as they try to escape and infiltrate the mondine, then glides through the packed train before focusing back on the platform and a young mondina called Silvana (played by the magnificent and indolent Silvana Mangano), who is dancing.