Under the Olive Tree

Why was this film not as successful as de Santis' previous film "Riso amaro" ("Bitter rice" with Silvana Mangano)? She was booked also for this film but got pregnant which made her appearance impossible. This is a similar story about simple local people working hard for their daily bread, but the three leading actors are all professionals, and their performances are not quite natural. They try to appear convincingly local, but there is something stilted about their over-acting. The cinematographic character of this film is very like the technique of the silent films, the characters being given unnecessarily monumental emphasis, while the great merit of the film is the many various local scenes of dancing and making merry, the bother about all the sheep, there are goats also adding to the confusion, the local colours are excellent and oustanding, but the melodrama is exaggerated - you miss here the Vittorio de Sica human touch, to make the drama gripping. Instead there is just a provisional happy ending.