Treasures from the Film Archives 2010 / Il bidone / Italy, France 1955
An aging crook and his two accomplices are profiting nicely from human credulity … until the tide turns, that is. What starts out as a good-humoured tale takes a dramatic turn when the film starts examining the characters’ individual circumstances. The digitally restored copy of what was at the time the most underrated of Federico Fellini’s films, presented to audiences for the first time in 2002 at Bologna’s Immagine Ritrovata festival, is being screened here in its Czech premiere to mark the 90th anniversary of Italy’s great director.
Fellini initially planned Il bidone as a bright story à la Lubitsch about three crooks who try all sorts of ruses to con gullible people out of their money; the tale takes a dramatic turn when the film starts examining each character’s individual circumstances. The director’s triumph La strada was still doing its lap of honour round the world when he suffered the greatest catastrophe of his career: the virtually unanimous rejection of Il bidone. Fellini had paid the price for refusing to draw on his hitherto success, ignoring calls from producers that he give the public a "new Gelsomina”. What is surprising is that very few of the more seasoned critics took into account the fact that they were watching a mutilated version of an almost two-hour-long film which had screened at Venice. All the more reason, then, to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the maestro’s birth at Karlovy Vary this year with a profile of his most underrated film. Visitors to Bologna’s Immagine Ritrovata had the opportunity to fully appreciate the film back in 2002 when the festival held the first ever screening of the complete, digitally restored copy which we present here at KVIFF.
112 min / Black & white, 35 mm
Director Federico Fellini
/ Screenplay Federico Fellini, Tullio Pinelli, Ennio Flaiano
/ Dir. of Photography Otello Martelli
/ Music Nino Rota
/ Editor Mario Serandrei, Giuseppe Vari
/ Producer Goffredo Lombardo
/ Production Titanus, S.G.C.
/ Cast Broderick Crawford, Richard Basehart, Giulietta Masina, Franco Fabrizi
/ Contact Intramovies, Cineteca di Bologna
Federico Fellini (b. 1920, Rimini – 1993, Rome), the most famous Italian filmmaker of the 20th century. His early work was shaped by his collaboration with Roberto Rossellini and the Christian interpretation of Neorealism he represented. This inspiration, steeped in poetic tragedy, still dominated Fellini’s films from the 1950s, which ensured him international renown, particularly La strada (1954). He fully developed his unmistakable style for the first time in La dolce vita (1960), where he revealed the depths of his imagination, his observations of society becoming increasingly introspective, almost dream-like. Following the culmination of his artistic career with 8 1/2 (Otto e mezzo, 1962), the Baroque visions of Fellini’s mature period constitute a series of brilliant variations on fundamental compulsive themes.
Intramovies
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E-mail: [email protected]
Cineteca di Bologna
Via dell'Industria 2, 40138, Bologna
Italy
Phone: +39 051 601 8607
E-mail: [email protected]
Paola Corvino
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