A Devil in Diapers

II Bidone. Round and solemn as a barrel of holy water, a fat old bishop (Broderick Crawford) rolls ponderously out of a big black automobile and stands staring at a huddle of Italian peasants. "My children," he informs them in a sanctimonious monotone, "I bring you tidings of great sorrow and good fortune. During the last war, a man was murdered and a treasure hidden on the land you own." The peasants, quivering with avarice, scuttle off to the appointed spot and dig up the treasure: an iron casket crammed with smoldering brilliants. "Worth at least six million lire," the bishop announces appreciatively. "But the church has no interest in them. By the terms of the murderer's will, they belong to you--on one condition: you must faithfully offer up 500 masses for the salvation of his miserable soul." The peasants turn pale. At 1,000 lire apiece, 500 masses would cost 500,000 lire! His Grace gravely agrees; the peasants ruefully remit. "Pax vobiscum," the bishop murmurs as his big black automobile rumbles off to Rome. On the way, however, the car stops. The bishop, round and lively as a barrel of Val-policella, rolls vigorously out and removes his vestments. Beneath them he is wearing a business suit--and on his face he is wearing a sly little smile.

The spectator smiles back. Obviously, the bishop is a bidone, a small-time swindler, and the camera has just watched him chouse some country chumpkins. But the spectator's smile does not last long. II Bidone begins as a common Italian comedy of criminal errors but it ends as the tragedy of an aging wise guy.

If it were only that, II Bidone would seem no more than a fairly interesting failure. Fortunately, it possesses an extrinsic significance: it is the missing volume of Federico Fellini's famous "trilogy of solitude," the shambling and disreputable pseudo-masterpiece that started with La Strada (1954) and culminated in Le Notti di Cabiria (1957).

What's more, II Bidone is clearly the first fumbling version of Fellini's masterpiece--8%. As in 8%, the hero is a man divided against himself: a brilliant but soulless showman inhabited/inhibited by an amiable but infantile idealist.

Both elements are inferentially Fellini, and Fellini labors hugely to reconcile the contradiction. In II Bidone he fails: the showman dissolves into the infant, the infant becomes a sort of devil in diapers. But the failure is not final. In 8 1/2 the opposites attain a higher synthesis: in the infant the showman finds spiritual rebirth, in the showman the infant finds creative release.

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