During planting season in Northern Italy s Po Valley, an earthy rice-field worker (Teorema s seductive Silvana Mangano) falls in with a small-time criminal (Il sorpasso s Vittorio Gassman) who is planning a daring heist of the crop, as well as his femme-fatale-ish girlfriend, played by the Hollywood star Doris Dowling (The Lost Weekend). Both a socially conscious look at the hardships endured by underpaid field workers and a melodrama tinged with sex and violence, this early smash for producer extraordinaire Dino De Laurentiis (Blue Velvet) and director Giuseppe De Santis (Days of Love) is neorealism with a heaping dose of pulp.
BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Giuseppe de Santis, a 2007 documentary by screenwriter Carlo Lizzani
- Interview with screenwriter Lizzani from 2003
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by critic Pasquale Iannone
