The river girl 1954 is decent, this isn't.

It was commonly admitted this movie was the better of both - but i have watched only 15 mm and have to say that a lot of things annoy me very much, first of all an artificial acting, borrowed a little bit from US cinema, that's meaning, Silvana Mangano's behavior in the train, the way she move her arm at the door, she overplay. This is US mentally (or film-noir), something modern overthrown on authenticity. And i don't like her, i worship S. Loren. The river girl is much more natural, while here the director wants to show effects, smooth camera travelings, songs in the train, this has nothing to do with capturing italian spirit.... And i dislike the handling of so much layers of effects, the will to impress the viewer, to enforce a style, this absurd leap to modernity. Yes this movie is 20 years ahead of its time. So i will finish watching it, hopefully.

Edit, i think Fellini watched this too much, this load of girls can be spotted by him sometimes, also the exact same texture of spectacle : lots of collective animation and people yelling around. An easy way to entertain.

Oh yes, they all sing so good as if they just leaved a competition for Broadway, unisono and perfectly in pitch... as in a musical (the song in the rice field has a taste of Westside story, 1958).

Almost every word is underlined by some instrumental. Another aspect of modernity, women smoking, and have no secrets. Every feeling is expressed right away, nothing hiding like a free modern soul should behave. No ancient moral code is kept... In The River Girl, religion matters, for example.

My rating is 1. This is just the cinema one shouldn't have done, build on effects, on jazz, on too much talking, like Orson Wells did, hysteria replacing content. Then the shallow plot about steeling the false jewel, the silly laughter in the rice cellar, and what else... i don't really care.

This is not the worst movie ever, it's evil. It opened the door to pandora's box of empty brain's spectacle, "entertainment".

I didn't watch the last 1/3, only every 10 s. It's not watchable.