Fernando De Leo nicks The Sting's plot for this Italian version of that Paul Newman heist film. That said, I'm so dumb I didn't realise this was the case until about forty minutes into the film.
Luc Merenda this time plays Swiss (French?) con artist Nick Hezard, a man who, along with hooker mother and non-hooker father, like to pull cons on rubes. Little does Nick know that big time crook/seemingly legitimate business Lee Cobb has just had his own diamonds stolen, killed the thief he hired to do the job, claims the insurance on the stuff, and sets up Nick Hezard to be the fall guy.
Hezard gets winds of this while pulling a scam on a train involving a dwarf as Cobb's hired goons plant a stolen jewel on him, and his fence then gets his throat slit for his trouble. At this point Hezard decides to scam Cobb of all of his cash using an extremely elaborate ruse, not made easy by Cobb's goons and an over-zealous investigator from the insurance company. Throat slashing aside, it's jolly japes from then on out.
I going to say right now that this is a film you've got to be in the mood for. De Leo's trying to shake things up a bit here and it's nice to see all that groovy split-screen work, plus those nifty set designs like Dagmar Lassander's black and white apartment, complete with diminishing nude pictures of herself on the walls, and Nick's mother's house that has scores of dolls hanging from the walls and ceiling. The music's fine too, but the comedy is very broad and Luc Merenda isn't exactly known for being a comedian. In saying that, he does give it a go, so it may just be the guy dubbing him who has let the side down.
Lee Cobb as usual is good as the grumpy old man, and it's nice to see William Berger in a Eurocrime film (he was in another that year, but that one seems lost in the fog of time).
