Il bidone (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Il Bidone (The Swindler) is a notable Federico Fellini film from 1955.

Broderick Crawford stars as a member of a trio of crooks, cheating people out of their money in less than prosperous Italian towns.  The Crawford character is forty-eight years old and has a daughter he rarely sees, and, as critic Vernon Young pointed out, he is “a lonely swindler” (my italics).  Plus, because of his conscience, he is running out of steam, but not yet ready to let go of degeneracy.  Not at all.

Albeit not a great Fellini movie, Il Bidone is truthful and pretty incisive.  A little less humanistic than, say, I Vitelloni and Nights of Cabiria (man, thou art vile), it also presents fewer circus-and-Catholicism motifs than those pics.  Seeing Giulietta Masina, a Fellini regular (and ex-wife), in this movie nicely erased my memory of her in the last F.F. movie I saw her in: the terrible Juliet of the Spirits. 

(In Italian with English subtitles)

Film poster for Starting Over – Copyright 1979, Paramount Pictures (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What might be a decent novel is, here, an unsatisfying film.  The script is wobbly, and the strikingly handsome Burt Reynolds, with his star quality, is miscast as an ordinary, somewhat less-than-virile gent.

Starting Over (1979) does effectively focus, though, on the internal psychological ping-pong experienced by divorced and recently unattached people.

Directed by Alan J. Pakula.

Cover of The Song of Bernadette

The central character in The Song of Bernadette (1943) is a good girl who becomes a devout and holy one.  In Lourdes, France she sees a vision of a lady who eventually says “I am the Immaculate Conception” and so convinces all that she is the Blessed Virgin.  The film, well directed by Henry King, is about changes and revelations related to the soul. . . Really, a Protestant doesn’t know what to make of a pronouncement like “I am the Immaculate Conception,” but this might induce one to contemplate whether all his theological beliefs are true. . .

Although I’ve never read the Franz Werfel novel on which the movie is based, I can declare Bernadette a beautiful and sensitive cinematic work.  Jennifer Jones enacts a spiritual person flawlessly.

I was never drawn to regularly watching the FOX series, Gotham, but Monday’s season finale was a barn burner.  It was busy but not too busy, with a cliffhanger involving monsters, and everything is at stake!

Also, Ben McKenzie (Jim Gordon) released his acting chops in a pronounced way.

I was never drawn to regularly watching the FOX series, Gotham, but Monday’s season finale was a barn burner.  It was busy but not too busy, with a cliffhanger involving monsters, and everything is at stake!

Also, Ben McKenzie (Jim Gordon) released his acting chops in a pronounced way.