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Il bidone (VOSTF)
Location
Main screening room
Date
May 30th, 2021
Admission
G
Duration
90 min
Cycle
Centennial Anniversary of Fellini

As an institution with a consistent focus on the history of cinema, a comprehensive Federico Fellini retrospective is the least we can do to mark his centennial. He was a great inventor of cinematic forms and a complex artist – paradoxical, tormented, light-hearted, provocative, introspective, brutal, idealistic and jaded all at once. He recreated the world through his lens, while remaining a sharp observer of his contemporaries and the many sensitivities of his time.

The Swindle
Directed by
Federico Fellini
Language
VOSTF
Actors
Broderick Crawford, Giulietta Masina, Richard Basehart, Franco Fabrizi
Origins
Italy, France
Year
1955
Duration
113 min
Genre
Drama, comedy
Rating
G
Format
16mm
Synopsis

Three pathetic small-time crooks wander the countryside near Rome in search of victims. Their favourite scam is to dress up as clerics to swindle credulous believers. But the oldest of the three, Augusto, starts to grow tired of their meaningless existence. Now jaded, it dawns on him that their final caper is approaching.

The Swindle

The trailer is VO. The movie will be presented with french subtitles.

Federico Fellini

Federico Fellini was one of the greatest Italian writers and directors of the 20th century, and one of the most illustrious filmmakers in the history of cinema. He won the Palme d'or at Cannes in 1960 for La dolce vita, and took home the Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Film four times (La strada, Nights of Cabiria, 8 ½ and Amarcord), a record he shares with his compatriot Vittorio De Sica. Initially associated with neo-realism, Fellini’s work evolved over the course of the 1960s toward a unique approach related to European modernism, a movement associated with Ingmar Bergman, Michelangelo Antonioni, Alain Resnais, Jean-Luc Godard and Andrei Tarkovsky. His films grew increasingly to embrace a proliferation of themes, deliberate artifice and the complete erasure of boundaries between dream, imagination, hallucination and reality. On March 29, 1993, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded him a lifetime achievement Oscar, “in recognition of his place as one of the screen’s master storytellers.”

Federico Fellini

To explore

«Il s’agit bien d’abord d’un film de scénariste, et le récit y est conduit avec une habileté consommée (...). L’art de Fellini dans ce film est bien un art de romancier (...). Scénario et acteurs se confondent. Et à partir du moment où un cinéaste réussit ces miracles, il est évidemment bien vain de chipoter sur les détails. Indiscutablement, Il Bidone est le chef d’œuvre de Federico Fellini.»
Jacques Rivette
Arts (29 février 1956)

Sur notre blogue

Federico Fellini aurait eu 100 ans en 2020. Il a fait partie de ces cinéastes qui ont triomphé de leur vivant, dont la reconnaissance de leur apport au cinéma a été affirmée sans ambages, ce qui en retour a sans doute influencé les films qu’ils ont pu encore faire. Non pas qu’il ait gagné des prix à tout coup...

Full Cast
« Federico Fellini reprend et développe dans Il Bidone ce qu’avaient déjà exprimé ses œuvres précédentes, I Vitelloni et La Strada (...). Mais Fellini nous entraîne plus loin encore dans l’abjection. Il nous fait toucher le fond de l’ignominie. »
Claude Mauriac
Le Figaro littéraire (10 mars 1956)
About Federico Fellini
Formation
Carrière au cinéma
Autres activités
Filmography

Il bidone on the Fondazione Federico Fellini

Il bidone on Wikipedia

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