Il bidone  

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Il bidone, "The Drum [container]"; also known as The Swindle or The Swindlers) is a 1955 Italian film directed by Federico Fellini. It features Broderick Crawford, Richard Basehart and Giulietta Masina.

Released one year after the director's internationally successful La Strada, Il bidone continues with many of the same socially conscious, neorealist-inspired themes while minimizing the poetic realism and extravagant vitality, that is today known as "felliniesque", in favor of a more pointed political stance.

Plot

In the country outside Rome, a group of swindlers dress up as clerics and con poor farmers out of their savings. Another scam in a shanty town is to pretend they are officials taking deposits for apartments. The proceeds are spent on flashy cars, champagne and prostitutes.

One member of the gang, Picasso, pretends to his faithful wife Iris that he is a painter, but after a New Year's Eve party among criminals she stops believing him. His conscience is pricked and he decides to quit. Another member, Augusto, meets his teenage daughter Patrizia who he has not seen for years, and his conscience is also awakened. However he is recognised in a cinema with her, arrested and jailed.

When released he forms a new gang to work the clergy scam among peasants. After swindling a large sum out of a farming family, he talks to their paralysed teenage daughter. Her plight touches him, and when the gang come to share out the gains he says he gave it all back. A row develops and he is battered to the ground. Stripping him, the crooks find he has concealed the takings in his clothes. On a snowy hillside, they leave him to a slow death.

Cast




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Il bidone" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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