It seems like I've seen this movie at least a hundred times - when I was growing up Bluff was one of my favorite movies and I always watched it on TV whenever it was on. There's something about Adriano Celentano and Anthony Quinn's dynamic duo that makes Bluff such an immortal classic that I can watch over and over again, even in its native Italian language (which I watched just now for the first time).
The con movies are not the best at showing true emotions because its main characters are embedded with lies - they can do or tell anything just to play the game to the end, to succeed in a bluff - and this one is no exception. Celentano's Felix is young but talented enough to play big games all by himself whereas Quinn's Philip knows every trick in the book and is ready to put everything for the bluff of a lifetime, and they team up to pull it. Sure it sounds a lot like The sting that came out just 3 years prior to this one but it hasn't got either the class or charisma of the main characters (no disrespect to Paul Newman and Robert Redford but their duo is just ordinary and no match to these guys), or the astonishing music by Lelio Luttazzi that I got hooked on since the first seconds.
By the time I got internet and was in my twenties already I found out that I was watching an abridged version of the movie the whole time: for censorship reasons there were many scenes deleted that included nudity, profanity and questionable decisions made by Felix - which was not surprising why but it sort of robbed the character of his own growth. When we first meet him he's mean, green, egotistical and willing to stoop as low as one can get to take what he wants but by the end he realizes there's more to life than just a game. A bluff is a bluff but if the safety of your own and the people nearest you are at stake you'd do the impossible to keep it, even put mannequins on motorcycles and say "Andiamo!".
Bluff is the kind of story that you'd want to go back to as soon as you're beginning to miss those characters (which happens sooner than you think), it's funny, witty, has a ton of memorable moments and pieces of dialogue, incredible performances and unbelievably beautiful music score. Pa-ba-raaam..
