There's a lot to love about this film, with its unique setting in the rice fields of Northern Italy, progressive messages, and beautiful leading ladies (Silvana Mangano and Doris Dowling), both of whom are wonderful here. All of the humble female field workers are beautiful in fact, and its heartwarming to see them toiling away, supporting one another, and flirting and dancing with the men who are drawn to them like moths to light. The film combines empathy for these workers with a noir-like heist story which isn't a perfect mix, but it works, and makes for livelier neorealist fare than others in the genre.
There is feminism in the strength of these women despite the men exploiting them, such as the nefarious agents who take cuts out of their pay without ever lifting a finger. There is strong empathy with the working class here as well, and on a couple of occasions we see the workers realize the importance of solidarity, the first of which comes when tension rises against "illegal" laborers until a soldier passing through suggests they all simply band together. There is a repugnance expressed for those who would steal from people who have to work so hard to make a living, and at the same time, an expression of compassion about the penal system: "Prison was invented by people who have never been there."
Some of the feminism in the film is weakened by other aspects, though it was 1949 after all. The fate of the two main women characters hinges on the virtue of the men they fall in with - in one case, good (Raf Vallone, playing a soldier), and in the other, bad (Vittorio Gassman, playing a crook). One of the women has had an abortion, but not out of her own choice, out of his. There is also a sense of ogling these women as they bend over in the fields in their shorts, and Mangano stretches her long legs. The bigger issue for me was the direction the story took, as I wished it hadn't gone down the path of the heist (grand theft rice?), even though it was another way the dishonest men around these hardworking women attempted to take advantage of them.
Overall though, it's a good film. Great cinematography, strong performances, and it's impossible not to feel for these characters.
There is feminism in the strength of these women despite the men exploiting them, such as the nefarious agents who take cuts out of their pay without ever lifting a finger. There is strong empathy with the working class here as well, and on a couple of occasions we see the workers realize the importance of solidarity, the first of which comes when tension rises against "illegal" laborers until a soldier passing through suggests they all simply band together. There is a repugnance expressed for those who would steal from people who have to work so hard to make a living, and at the same time, an expression of compassion about the penal system: "Prison was invented by people who have never been there."
Some of the feminism in the film is weakened by other aspects, though it was 1949 after all. The fate of the two main women characters hinges on the virtue of the men they fall in with - in one case, good (Raf Vallone, playing a soldier), and in the other, bad (Vittorio Gassman, playing a crook). One of the women has had an abortion, but not out of her own choice, out of his. There is also a sense of ogling these women as they bend over in the fields in their shorts, and Mangano stretches her long legs. The bigger issue for me was the direction the story took, as I wished it hadn't gone down the path of the heist (grand theft rice?), even though it was another way the dishonest men around these hardworking women attempted to take advantage of them.
Overall though, it's a good film. Great cinematography, strong performances, and it's impossible not to feel for these characters.