The Swindlers (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The swindlers |
| Original title | Il bidone |
| Country of production |
Italy France |
| original language | Italian |
| Publishing year | 1955 |
| length | 101 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Federico Fellini |
| script | Federico Fellini Ennio Flaiano Tullio Pinelli |
| production |
Silvio Clementelli Charles Delac Mario Derecchi Goffredo Lombardo |
| music | Nino Rota |
| camera | Otello Martelli |
| cut |
Mario Serandrei Giuseppe Vari |
| occupation | |
| |
Die Schwindler is an Italian-French drama from 1955 directed by Federico Fellini with Broderick Crawford and Richard Basehart in the title roles. Fellini's wife Giulietta Masina took on the female lead .
action
Three small crooks, the stocky, aging Augusto, his rather good-natured and scrupulous friend Carlo, whom everyone only calls “Picasso” because he is a (admittedly unsuccessful) painter, and the still young, blond Roberto, have specialized in gullible people to cheat and take them out according to every trick in the book. Gullible farmers appear to them to be particularly rewarding sacrifices. Disguised in the costumes of religious dignitaries, they roam the country and take the money out of the pockets of ordinary people who feel closely connected to the Church and the Catholic faith. Even poor slum dwellers are exempted when, for example, they are promised new accommodation against advance payments and have them sign fake contracts. Augusto is the most unscrupulous of them all, a beefy guy with the disposition of a butcher's dog, the conscience of a nihilist and the demeanor of an honest man. The sensitive Carlo alias Picasso, on the other hand, has a notoriously guilty conscience, he cannot live well with his misdeeds and is ashamed in front of his wife Iris.
When Augusto meets his 18-year-old daughter Patrizia again one day, whom he has not seen for a long time, he wants to help her realize her grandiose life plans. But just at this moment the police step in and arrest Augusto for his trickery in front of Patrizia's eyes. Augusto is terribly uncomfortable with this, and his shame develops into a questioning of his own behavior during his subsequent stay in prison. After his release from prison he is again following the old ways of rip-offs, this time with new partners, but the inner contemplation leaves its first traces. On a farm where Augusto and his crook buddies want to pull some dumb country eggs again, he meets a very devout, paralyzed girl who asks him, who now appears in the garb of a bishop, for his blessing. So touched by her innocence and her inner radiance despite her difficult fate, the visibly touched crook does not have the heart to rip off the farmers and instead wants to give the child and their parents back the sum of money they have already stolen. Augusto's cronies are so angry about this that they beat their leader as soft as a diaper. They find the loot hidden in his clothes - it remains open whether he really wanted to return the money later or just cheat his accomplices - in any case they are sure that he wanted to withhold their share from them. Heavily injured, Augusto, plundered by his fellow thugs, remains behind and finally dies lonely and abandoned in nowhere.
Production notes
The Schwindler was created in the spring of 1955 a. a. in Marino (Latium) during the Sagra dell'uva festival and was presented to the public for the first time on September 9, 1955 as part of the Venice Biennale , where it was nominated for the Golden Lion . The mass start in Italy was on October 7, 1955. In the Federal Republic of Germany, the film could be seen from August 23, 1957.
Dario Cecchi was responsible for the film construction and the costumes, the later spaghetti western director Giuseppe Colizzi was the production manager.
Giulietta Masina and Richard Basehart, who already knew each other from the Fellini masterpiece La Strada - Das Lied der Straße , from the previous year (1954) , were to meet again in Germany after this film in 1959 when they played together in Jons and Erdme .
Reviews
Federico Fellini himself commented on his intentions as follows:
“ We have endeavored to rid this story of an Italian convention that loves to portray the swindlers of all time as funny heroes of comic adventures and clever guys; on the other hand, we didn't want this incident to appear like a gangster film . "
Below is a small selection of criticism from home and abroad:
“Fellini's twilight, the reasons are always the same and can be found in the metaphysical and the symbolisms […] The film almost looks as if it was made up of components: one always finds the same components in it, also in terms of form, from earlier works, similar sequences like the screaming of the child or the horse from La strada ... Picasso speaks and acts like a fool, and his wife Iris has the movements and tone of Gelsomina's voice. "
“With“ Die Schwindler ”Fellini had given up all ease; tragedy predominates, and a rascal, purified from Saul to Paul, has to pay for a touch of humanity with his life. "
"The film is not free from sentimentality, but it has great scenes in which the everyday life of a dreary life becomes clear - through realistic descriptions of the milieu and above all through the painful, lonely death of the protagonist, for whom his first good deed is fatal."
“ Zavattini had criticized Fellini for what he believed to be a betrayal of neorealism; With Il bidone Fellini gave the answer by making the film visually in the style of neorealism, but uncovering its sentimentality, as the neorealist film failed to show the degrading effects of poverty. "
“A masterpiece of Italian poetic realism, not without sentimentality, but with a fascinating depiction of the dreary milieu. A complicated and complex film by Fellini, whose socially critical and Christian perspectives only reveal themselves at second glance. "
Bosley Crowther wrote on the occasion of the US premiere of Die Schwindler ”in the New York Times issue of November 20, 1964:“ It is, in short, an obviously cheaply made crime thriller, very emotional and therefore the two films, between which he was shot, inferior. But it has some very strong Fellini moments and accumulations of moods that make it all worth seeing. And there is good acting to see. [...] Broderick Crawford's portrayal as a swindler is cumbersome ... with its own penchant for acting poses in the crook scenes. Richard Basehart shows a tendency towards sentimentality as his buddy, who is a family man, and Giulietta Masina plays, without being too special, his suspicious wife. "
Individual evidence
- ↑ cit. based on Reclam's film guide by Dieter Krusche, Stuttgart 1973, p. 231
- ^ The swindlers in the lexicon of international film
- ^ Il bidone in The New York Times
Web links
- The swindlers in the Internet Movie Database (English)