Il Bidone

Broderick Crawford, Richard Basehart and Franco Fabrizi star as a trio of minor league crooks successfully running scams on Italian peasants in this lesser 1955 slice-of-con-men-life from Italian cinema legend Federico Fellini. Although the Fellini penchant for grand spectacle is not much on display here (with the exception of one elaborate dinner party scene), the tragic downfall of an essentially good-hearted person (a theme better explored in Fellini's superior La Strada) is still moving today. Unfortunately, the print (the same as the one used for the 1989 Connoisseur Video version) features a fair amount of rough edits and scratches. An optional purchase for larger foreign film collections. (R. Pitman)