MANGANO’S beginnings in film — first as an extra, then as the stunning sensual lead star of ‘BITTER RICE’ — was indebted to the artistry of herself, her physical beauty, her body. But the soul part was not far behind from the start with ‘Bitter Rice’, even though the entire popularity of this film was apparently based on Mangano’s sensuality and the plot’s cheap sensational adoption of a typical American Film Noir pessimistic climax, adapted to Italy’s emerging neo-Realism film style despite the Socialist anti-American intention of the film’s director, Guiseppe de Santis, of working-class Italian peasant origin.

Originality
Imitation in art is not necessarily a bad thing, depending on what is being imitated, and if such imitation mostly pertains to form, but not content, which can bring a whole new aspect out of an adapted form.
‘Bitter Rice’, which began filming in 1948, could not escape the influence of Hollywood films, since most early cinematic possibilities had already been suggested and demonstrated in Hollywood cinematic styles. De Santis’s camera eye on Mangano’s corporeal beauty was no different than various American directors who filmed Jean Harlow, or Howard Hughes’s camera on Jane Russell in ‘THE OUTLAW’ etc. De Santis’s extremely sensual scenes of Mangano bare-breasted, in skin-tight shorts etc was quite in keeping with neo-Realism’s honesty.

Special performance
Whether De Santis’s intention was simply to use Mangano’s popularity as a beauty — she had recently won the Miss Italy beauty queen contest — and her skills as a dancer, some other important and significant qualities were suggested by her role and performance. These qualities depend more on Mangano’s presence than the film’s intended narrative about the Americanization of traditional post-war Italian life by the growing overseas fame of American subculture originality via Hollywood films like The Western and Film Noir, swing Jazz, and the fabulous dances it spawned, like the Boogie–Woogie, etc, beatnik fashions, vivacious first- person fiction, comic books and cartoons.
Mangano, in ‘Bitter Rice’, is the peasant girl working in Italy’s rice fields among other Italian girls of her generation, but from which she stands out as a wayward, almost scandalous example because she identifies with all these art forms of mid-20th Century American sub-culture.

Subtle expression of ‘Soul’
If de Santis, a confirmed Socialist film director, intended ‘Bitter Rice’ to represent what Roy Armes in his 1971 book, ‘PATTERNS OF REALISM’ described as “The principles of Socialist Realism, the adoption of the viewpoint of the working-class, and the belief in the intrinsic superiority of the Socialist State (whatever its imperfections) over the Capitalist system have exercised an enormous influence on post-war Italian cinema,” then ‘Bitter Rice’ was no more radical than hundreds, even thousands of 1930s, 40s, and 50s American/Hollywood films more critical of America than Italian films could be critical of Italy, since the State during 1930s fascism had started Italy’s film industry.
Indeed, one has to see John Huston films like ‘IN THIS OUR LIFE’ 1942; ‘THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE’ 1948; ‘WE WERE STRANGERS’ 1949; and one of Hollywood’s greatest films, the emotionally touching ‘THE ASPHALT JUNGLE’, 1950, to verify just one of America’s greatest social film directors.
One wonders if De Santis knew of, or saw, Huston’s ‘The Asphalt Jungle’, or Huston knew or saw ‘Bitter Rice’ while both films were being made and released in 1950. Why? Because both films share a similar scene. In ‘The Asphalt Jungle’, when the old jewel thief, Sam Jaffe is on his way to the airport, he stops at a cafe and observes some American youths dancing to swing Jazz before a juke box. And when they run out of dimes to put in the machine, he provides them with a handful, and delights in the brilliant style of an American girl who dances to swing.
Similarly, Mangano, in ‘Bitter Rice’, puts down some of the best dancing to Jazz (which, being mostly a black musical form which some detractors said made white girls tear off their clothes in wild ecstasy), sharing the ‘Soul’ of ‘coloured folk’. It is one of the unforgettable scenes in this early film of hers, which shows Mangano’s unique and brilliant expression of body and soul.