Melodrama in Roma Città Aperta and Riso Amaro

Moving on to the next film, in Riso amaro, melodrama and neorealism coexist to serve a different purpose. Namely, Giuseppe De Santis uses their juxtaposition as symbolism for the ideals of consumerism and Marxism, respectively. In fact, De Santis was already well-known as a Communist thinker, frequently communicating those ideas through his films. To begin to understand the significance of this symbolism in Riso amaro, the influx of American culture into Italy must first be explored. Any nation finds itself susceptible to the culture of a foreign army, but the liberating Americans brought a particularly strong influence to Italy during the Second World War. Robin Buss hypothesises that the great impact was due to the large number of those soldiers interacting with the local people who spoke Italian themselves because of ancestry. Following the war, the Italian population, particularly in the lower classes, sought to leave the war behind them and take full advantage of the recently lifted fascist restrictions. Thus, many turned to the allure of Americanised glamour and consumerism as well as photo-romances. De Santis viewed this as an invasion of a foreign culture that threatened the pure, rural life of lower-class Italy. In Riso amaro, the director links the presence of melodrama to an infatuation with Hollywood glamour.

To begin with, the opening scene of Riso amaro introduces this dichotomy between consumerism and worker solidarity. In fact, even the opening title helps establish that, reading “man has sought two things since the dawn of time – food and love.” In this scenario, food obviously connects to the basic needs of the workers, while love carries the connotation of the artificial sentiment of photo-romances. Followi...

... middle of paper ...

...sà. Dir. Roberto Rossellini. Organizzazione Film Internazionali, 1946. DVD.

Pucci, Lara. ""Terra Italia": The Peasant Subject as Site of National and Socialist Identities in the Work of Renato Guttuso and Giuseppe De Santis." Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 71 (2008): 315-34. JSTOR.

Riso Amaro. Dir. Giuseppe De Santis. Perf. Silvana Mangano, Doris Dowling, and Vittorio Gassman. Lux Film, 1949. DVD.

Roma Città Aperta. Dir. Roberto Rossellini. Perf. Aldo Fabrizi and Anna Magnani. Excelsa Film, 1945. DVD.

Viiti, Antonio C. “Riso Amaro/Bitter Rice.” The Cinema of Italy. Ed. Giorgio Bertellini. London: Wallflower, 2004. Print.

Wagstaff, Christopher. “Italian genre films in the world market.” Hollywood and Europe: Economics, Culture, National Identity: 1945-95. Ed. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith and Steven Ricci. London: British Film Institute, 1998. 74-85. Print.