Riso amaro (1949)'s activity

Giuseppe De Santis creates a strange fusion of Italian neorealism and American Film Noir in Bitter Rice, on the one hand showing real and real-seeming seasonal workers (I have so many questions about rice culture now) and lots of small private moments between the women helping in the country's reconstruction through this back-breaking and thankless labor, and on the other, layering in a Noir crime story (that doesn't quite culminate in the great Rice Heist I longed to see) that turns to violence and melodrama in a way that can only be cinema, and therefore rather opposite to the neorealist ideal. It feels more "posed" than films that fit more squarely in the genre, but since every shot is a thing of beauty, you're gonna hear me complaining. A number of them stay with me, like the white hats flying in the background like a perpetual graduation ceremony, Silvana's "noose dress", and the various crane shots that show incredible depth of field. And in terms of Noir, it still provides some twists, like the fact that this is a women's story and therefore has an HOMME fatal, and a strong theme showing how people of good character can be corrupted, or those of bad character can be redeemed. Lurid in terms of violence and sex, but not overlurid, I can also see how this film ends up on LGBTQ+ lists as at least "coded", and that's all very interesting too.