Bruno, the irresistible son (Enzo Staiola)
Antonio Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani), his desperate father lands a job (Bicycle Thieves)
Silvana (Silvana Mangano), one of two central heroines rice workers
Francesca (Doris Dowling), her rival & friend
A young Vittorio Gassman, tremendously gifted man (Bitter Rice)
Friends and readers,
You owe this blog review to my observing that coming this fall, there will be two movie courses I know I’ll love at OLLI at AU (under headers like “moral and gender studies”) and one I’m taking just now at OLLI at Mason (less pretentious but still recent) fine movies. To my also noticing that Susan Bordo’s substack newsletter endorsing with grandiose language a second movie just made from Nabokov’s pornographic Lolita (the latest by Adrian Lyne, who characteristically makes movies with “queers” the vulnerable victim). Both films are violent pornography targeting women, from a book where an author (Nabokov) exploits the use of irony to encourage his audience to revel in sado-masochism and cruelty to women. Third, the resounding success of Succession: about as vicious a set of capitalist puppets as one can find (with the kick how they make fun of others, and subtextually exposing “weakness”).
Somewhere some place here on the Internet someone ought to be pointing to actual great, good, nobly moral films. I studied and taught these as part of my Italian Novels of the 20th century course this past spring, but they transcend their particular origin while remaining firmly products of the post WW2 era.
Briefly, Italian neo-realistic films made between 1946 and sometime in the 1970s. There are recognized 7 indisputable masterpieces of this subgenre in Italian, of which Bicycles Thieves is one. What they share: a mode of visual storytelling such that the cameras are set into a location of ordinary scenic reality, be it city really extant or country, or places – apartment houses, clubs – where ordinary people live, work, play. The people of the story are impoverished, desperately deprived which we see them every day coping with; our characters who we are to care intensely about are in some kind of crisis – and the way the situation is portrayed the viewer is made to imagine reality does not have to be this way: Rossellini Open City, Rome (Anna Magnani); Paisan Germany Year Zero (1946); 2 more by Di Sica, Shoeshine, and Umberto D (the 1st about children, the second people needing their pension); Visconti’s The Earth Trembles. A not quite forgotten equivalent, pushed to the side because by an open communist, using box office stars and film noir techniques, Giuseppe De Santis, Bitter Rice (Riso Amaro) about women rice field workers; also forgotten is a central woman screenplay writer for all many of these, Suso Cecchi d’Amico.
These have their origins in the 1930s, in the US in King Vidor Our Daily Bread, in Italy in the 1930s where there was no tightly controlled single govt (as in Germany) so class conflict was centrally on the agenda, and a number of central people in the Neo-realistic films got their start in Mussolini’s theaters; France with Jean Renoir (coming out of German Expressionism); UK so complicated to discuss (the class system upheld still ) and US too sad (the intransigent anti-socialist McCarthy era) so all we’ve got at the time is William Wyler (remember The Ox-bow Incident) and Frank Capra, Marty and Pawnbroker. In England in the 1950s, a few unforgettable ones are made where ironic deep rebellion is central: The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, This Sporting Life, Room at the Top, A Touch of Honey (again just one by a woman allowed in). From perspective of literary people this kind of cinema in Italy is 1890s verismo novels ( which you may catch in Operas like Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticano and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci). For England and the US short realistic novellas and plays (Angry Young Men type or very sad). The Soviet school of cinema in the early 20th century influenced these 20 years of films. Montage invented, juxtaposition.
I could stop here and just cite two wonderful video discussions. Neorealistic films: Mark Shiel, Life as It is:
Just on Bitter Rice: Brian Berry
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But I’ll include a couple of paragraphs each: Some have described The Bicycle Thieves and others of the famous seven as dramas of loneliness, of isolation. Whether it be that Antonio is tricked by a group of bicycle thieves, or himself set upon a community who defends the bicycle thief or attack him for stealing one of theirs, he is ever alone. Amid the worst thing of all: anonymous crowds. We are so used to it we don’t think about it – the rehearsal of a play or entertainment in the same spot a political meeting is held. Repeated disjunctions between the image we see and what is asserted about it. The point endlessly is social reform, a regeneration of a sense of self – as in Carlo Levi’s argument for eradicating fascism from Italy and set up a genuinely socialist egalitarian society, the basis must be self-esteem for all. That you have the right to be indignant, to fight for rights for rights. The one hopeful note is the boy, his son, better than him at recognizing absurdity, at sticking to a task, at sheer loving.
The film asks the question of what is a hero? It’s anti-Italian state in all its forms. Dramatizing sports (very popular) but also gambling and fortune telling. Camerini in the 30s depicted the depression, unusual but not forbidden altogether, using inexperienced actors, improvisation, and in later years Camerini learned to talk of his use of montage – stills following stills. The story element not upper class. It also as far as it dares exposes the uselessness, meagreness of the Catholic church’s endeavors to function as a charitable space within a community.
Bicycle Thieves shows a communal tragedy. Music is very evocative – in many of these films the musical paratexts and themes are central to part o their effect: they repeat and repeat. Are accused of sentimentality – maybe to the super-rich it is despicable sentimental to care about the troubles of others but I daresay that is not true of our own. The American Everyone’s Protest Novel is sentimental.
Read Marilyn Fabe’s Closely Watched Films, Chapter 6: Bicycle Thieves (you must scroll down and click to enlarge)
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Berry suggested Bitter Rice combined the techniques and outlook of neo-realism with highly melodramatic uses of film noir (especially at film’s end in the granary) – dark and light imagery. The presence of box office stars also skews it so we get highly theatrical presentations – the death by hanging from a hook of Walter (Vittorio Gassman), the PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) of Silvana after she’s been raped, led to shoot people, betray the other rice workers that leads to her suicide by jumping from the high top of a watchtower. Berry talks of 2 romances, but I fail to see how Walter’s behavior to either woman can be seen as romantic: the old myth of women attracted to vicious men is operative in this film. Ralph Vallone as Marlo, a brother type.
Among the many feminocentric (before the word existed) motifs of the film is women’s friendships, women as a support network for one another – conversations about things other than men. It passes the Bechtel test before Bechtel was born. Women with babies. The central couple of the film are Francesca and Silvana – we have a use of announcer for over-voice. The film expands our geographical temporal understanding of Italian realities.
On Silvana Mangano. To make a somewhat respectable career, she was somewhat careful what roles she took, and never became as famous or rich as she could have. This one of her early key remembered films. She also married the director and helped his career -– de Laurentis. As a committed Giuseppe de Santis was determined to expose the false myths about women as producers of food (that was the second essay I sent – a Song of Protest). Rice workers had a reputation for militancy. Silvana dressed to evoke Rita Hayworth (remember the poster poor Antonio in Bicycle Thieves was putting up so badly was of Rita Hayworth).
Bitter Rice evokes a connection between the fecund female body and the landscape — this kind of association is a throwback, refusing to acknowledge independent individual action the way men are granted, she is not an animal. To De Santis credit the film is not picturesque, not sentimental; you redeem yourself by working; fighting over rules against non-union people are part of the reality. Silvana reads photo novels, dances American style dances (her mother was English); she is aspirational, moody irritable – all this sets her apart and makes her friendly with Francesca also an outsider.
Read Pasquale Ianone: A Field In Italy
Unlike Bicycle Thieves, Bitter Rice was excluded from chief festivals, criticized heavily as left-wing propaganda, nonetheless it made its way as proletarian romance, 5th highest grossing film in Italy 1949-50; NYTimes critic liked its plainness and directness. Another essays about its direct Italian context and defiance of fascist stereotypes show it was meant to expose the pressure women into becoming work horses, mothers as if that would make them powerful and happy.
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And now I have for a while concluded all the blogs I wanted to make out of the wonderful course I taught this spring, which matter I will do again, but with a different set of books & films from the era.
The women returning to their shacks, working, laughing in the wet and rain
Seeking the stolen bicycle in the downpour
Ellen
Ellen And Jim Have A Blog, Two 