After the end of the Second World War, many poor, young Italian women earned their living working in the rice fields, spending hours every day planting and harvesting under the merciless sun in the northern plains of their country. Their story became so well-known that it attracted the attention of one of the great postwar Italian directors, Giuseppe De Santis. His film Bitter Rice was a classic of the period. It featured the stunning Silvana Mangano, whose semi-clad figure – the women worked in the bare minimum of clothes – projected an assertive, earthy sexuality.