Il bidone

Il bidone The Swindle is a 1955 Italian drama film directed by Federico Fellini starring Broderick Crawford, Richard Basehart and Giulietta Masina. 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, Carlo – nicknamed Picasso in being an aspiring artist – pretends to his faithful wife Iris that he is a traveling salesman, but she gradually 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 recognized in a cinema with her, arrested and jailed. When released he joins a new gang to work the clergy scam among peasants. After swindling a large sum out of a farming family, he talks to their polio-afflicted 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.