Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

One of the best films i have seen

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Il Bidone mayn't make my top 5 of Fellini movies like Nights of Cabiria, La Dolce Vita, 8 1/12, Amarcord and La Strada. But along with Ginger and Fred it makes my top 7. Il Bidone is superbly directed as ever by Fellini, and looks absolutely beautiful with the sweeping cinematography and scenery. The music score by Nino Rota is bright and jaunty in tone with enough of the sumptuous orchestration to make his wok distinctive. The story is both charming and moving, with a nostalgic feel that is further accentuated by Fellini's direction and Rota's score. Broderick Crawford in the lead gives a heart-breakingly moving performance, and you do feel sympathy for his character. The rest of the acting is strongly characterised, but Crawford is the one who really stands out in the memory.Overall, one of Fellini's best and unjustly overlooked. 10/10 Bethany Cox

I don't like keeping actors confined to one type of role, but it doesn't always work when they try something different (see Eastwood in The Beguiled,for example.) Likewise, here in this movie Broderick Crawford is required to play a lovable rogue with a certain degree of pathos.This is a case where the casting is wrong. It's too difficult for Crawford to play lovable and he is not the type to encourage an emotional response.He is the consummate tough guy, a literal 'heavy' - without the obvious qualities to portray a con-man. (I concede that he could play a man of the church).Despite the casting reservation, Fellini is masterful as usual. The party scene seems to predate the recent Italian prime minister's 'bunga-bunga' parties.SPOILER coming up: how did the team 'plant' the treasure and bones without being spotted? One location even had two savage dogs roaming around.Excepting that and Mr. Crawford, everyone else - and the situations - seems real. See it.

What a sad film. Broderick Crawford heads a small band of con men but is getting too old and pathetic for the game. He is brilliant in the role and we barely sympathise with him once as he gradually fades away. The men are wretched to their women. There is a woman in the front car seat who gets thrust into the windscreen to accommodate a hoodlum getting or out behind her and another forced to strip by a bunch of guys at a party. The only moments where any sort of humanity show through is when Crawford decked out as a priest gets told the wonder of life by a young crippled girl he is about to ruin. I guess things must have been bad in Italy after the war and actions such as squeezing life savings out of peasants seemed fair game but it is wretched to watch grown men stoop so low. Great film making though and Fellini is so assured a prison sentence is dealt with by use of a fade. Hardly a feel good movie but well worth seeing.

This is a richly poetic film, a stark portrait of three con-men who make their living by swindling the poor out of what little money they have. The film moves back and forth between the scams they pull in the countryside and their lives in the city between jobs. The group's leader is Augusto, played expressively by the great Broderick Crawford. The other two con men are Roberto (Fabrizi), a lady chaser and risk-taker, and Picasso (Basehart), a family man and painter. Picasso's wife Iris is played by the great Giulietta Masina. Crawford (who won an Oscar for "All the King's Men," a film I need to see) is really excellent as Augusto, who begins addressing the matter of his conscience when by chance he runs into the daughter he has abandoned. The party and dance scenes in the film's first half are really fantastic and crazy, full of men and women dancing to Nino Rota's music, crazy situations and fights arising, lots of drinking, lots of people looking at the camera (including a photographer who bounces up from the bottom of the frame, takes a picture, and kneels back down out of sight…that's typical Fellini there). For all of the fun that's present in this film, it takes some very moving and sad turns...and the amazing thing is how Fellini balances something funny and surreal to something truly heartbreaking (the film's final 15 minutes are stunningly touching).Nino Rota's score is, as always, marvelous and really nails the feel and tone of the film. There are many themes, including a somber theme for Augusto's daughter, a really eccentric circus march theme, and lastly a terrific emotional theme that especially pulls into sharp effect in the film's closing moment. All of his themes are cleverly adapted in many variations bouncing between different styles of music- from mambo to wildly eccentric dance to rather Arabian to his typical circus-like music to just as often something very dramatic and emotional. This great score was released by CAM records just a couple years ago, it includes most of the music that's in the film, and is a great listen for Rota fans.`Il Bidone' is the most ignored and overlooked film in Fellini's body of work, which is unfortunate. It's truly unforgettable how it depicts struggle, loneliness, and utmost guilt in the loveliest and most poignant ways imaginable.