ABSTRACT
When I heard one of my colleagues cleverly sneer, “It’s a swindle!” to a countryman after the screening of this film at the Venice Festival, I didn’t feel very proud of being a French critic. But these “wise guys” weren’t as harsh as most Italian critics, for I have also heard the most esteemed among them declare that II Bidone (The Swindle or The Swindlers, 1955) definitely proved that those who had praised La Strada (1954) had been mistaken. For my part, I admit that the Venice screening left me perplexed because I don’t understand Italian: some long sequences therefore appeared to me to be doubly questionable. But, far from negating my admiration for La Strada, II Bidone seemed to me to confirm the genius that was manifested in it. Even if Fellini’s latest film was relatively unsuc cessful, it still suggested a power of invention, a poetic and moral vision, that was by no means inferior to that of La Strada or even I Vitelloni (195 3).
