Carlo Mazzarella	Mascheroni
Maria Capuzzo	Argentina
Lia Corelli	Amelia
Doris Dowling	Francesca
Mariano Englen	Capomonda
Maria Grazia Francia	Gabriella
Vittorio Gassman	Walter Granata
Mariemma Bardi	Gianna
Silvana Mangano	Silvana Melega
Attilio Dottesio
Antonio Nediani	Nanni
Nico Pepe	Beppe
Ermanno Randi	Paolo
Ceccho Rissone	Aristide
Dedi Ristori	Anna
Adriana Sivieri	Celeste
Raf Vallone	Marco Galli
Isabella Zennaro	Giuliana
Manlio Mannozzi
Anna Maestri	Irene

Francesca, young hotel maid, instigated by her lover Walter, (small criminal of no scruples from North Italy) steals the necklace of a customer. They get away both, and Francesca mixes with the boiled chestnut that depart by train. In the dormitory of the rice weesers, Francesca is stolen of the necklace, by means of a companion, Silvana. Walter comes on the work place, and having learned that Silvana is presumably in possession of the becklace, he encircles the young girl. Silvana is not insensitive to the hurries of the cheat and, abandoned a sergeant, that loves her, she becomes Walter’s lover; while the sergeant flirt with Francesca, by now repented of the evil done. Walter, having discovered that the necklace stolen is false, decides, to get his own back, to steal the rice accumulated in the stores as final prize for the rise weesers. While the girls are celebrating the end of the job season, Walter convinces Silvana to introduce again the water in the fields, to distract the attention of the rise weeser and of the workers. But he has not calculated Francesca and the sergeant, that been aware of everything, gather the thieves on the fact. In the shot-out that follows, Walter is killed. Silvana, desperate, kills herself.

PRIZES

Nomination to the Oscar in 1951, for the best subject to Giuseppe De Santis and Carlo Lizzani

CRITIQUE

Just thirtytwo year-old, De Santis signs his masterpiece: an exciting and complex melodrama in a social setting, where the lowland of Vercelli becomes theater of politic struggles and personal duels with a western taste. Show and civil conscience are melt with rare mastery in a story of comprehensive work that can be at par with the big epic American frescos and where “the myths and the mythologies of the popular culture are reproduced and formalized by the staging, and are moved by the big themes of the collective unconscious”. Today it is still amazing the incipit, that in the Italian cinema remains an essential contribution in the relationship between mass media and seventh art. Mangano is unforgettable (especially in the torrid boogiewoogie) that anticipates - with elegance - the figure of the curvaceous woman of the Fifies. Gassman is anthological, beautiful scoudrel properly punished in a gruesom final (P. Mereghetti “Dizionario dei flilm 1998”, translated by Alice Castoldi)

NOTES

Music directed by Ferdinando Previtali