The story of a small time conman. Il bidone is a series of episodes in his life as Fellini aims for some type of story telling that invokes a sense of tragedy about his life.
This is a little seen and barely discussed Fellini film that came after La strada. I guess this would be called a minor Fellini film in his canon. I suspect people today don't have a lot of patience for any of Fellini's self indulgent, slow moving and interesting films if they are even watched at all anymore.
When you think of director/actor combinations, names like John Ford and John Wayne, or Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock come up. However one would be hard pressed to find the team of Broderick Crawford and Frederico Fellini in the annals of film history. But there's Crawford is in all his big lug glory playing a con man disguised as a priest no less. Nothing like unusual casting in a Fellini film.
Also showing up in the film are Richard "Admiral Nelson" Basehart, and Fellini's long suffering wife Giulietta Masina as Basehart's wife
The big issue with the film is the script which is very episodic. Fellini also seems to have had problems getting a handle on Crawford's conman character. It's as if he can't decide how sympathetic he feels towards him.
Il bidone does contain a lot of good scenes and has that special feeling Fellini could bring to a film. Some of the landscapes are very striking and the acting is pretty good. Compared to some later Fellini films like the super indulgent Satyricon or And the Ship Sails On this is a very good and very watchable Fellini film. Certainly worth a look.
109 minutes.
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