Everybody Loves A Con, Con Artists Unless They Are The Dreaded Con- Steve Martin and Michael Caine, Oops And, Oh Yeah, Glenne Headly “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” (1988)-A Film Review

Everybody Loves A Con, Con Artists Unless They  Are The Dreaded Con- Steve Martin and Michael Caine, Oops And, Oh Yeah, Glenne Headly “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” (1988)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Leslie Dumont

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, starting Glenne Headly, Steve Martin, Michael Caine, 1988

One of the virtues of coming back to work at this publication occasionally after I retired from my daily by-line at Women Today is to hear the stories from some of the older writers about various characters, mainly but not exclusively male con artists and armed robbers, they knew when they were growing up. That includes my old flame and now fellow writer Josh Breslin who along with one Sam Lowell live by the headline above that “everybody loves a con artist except the conned.” That idea will come in handy as I review the film Dirty Rotten Scoundrels because the whole film, every waking minute, is spent documenting a series of interrelated cons. Cons coming out of your ears before the last frame. (By the way in case some other writer has betrayed a water cooler thought the relationship between Josh and I these days is well, murky. After my two failed due to the press of work marriages and his three due the press of work failed marriages murky is good, very good.)      

One day around the water cooler on another occasion not related to the discussion mentioned above Sam, Josh, Fritz, Frank and maybe Laura Perkins were talking about the legendary Eddie Riley from Sam and Frank’s old neighborhood who pulled the biggest con they had heard of on a New York banker who was looking to  make some easy money to get out from under some Ponzi scheme he was running that was starting to go awry and he would listen to anything that sounded like a life-saver. (Rule number one by cynical Sam make sure your mark is desperate then it is like finding money on the ground to take whatever you want.) Nobody was still sure of all the details since the gaff had happened a couple of decades ago but basically Eddie set up a fake stock brokerage house complete with agents and all putting up numbers for stocks especially around say the Acme Toy Company. A sure thing, especially when Eddie said he had inside information (illegal I know but goes on all the time just be smart about it). So Mr. Investment Banker forked over a cool 100 thou and the game is on. Two or three days later the stock jumped from say ten to fifteen dollars, a good rise with Eddie’s assurance that it was just the start. Another 100 thou, no two hundred thou since Mr. Big was in a very deep hole. Stock goes from say fifteen to twenty-two and Mr. Big is almost hooked. Another couple of hundred thou to make a half million and the stock goes to thirty then thirty-five in a short time.

Mr. Big is breathing a sigh of relief. So he goes another two hundred thou. Eddie makes his smart move here by not being too greedy and starts to wind the con up although he knew for certain he could have gotten to a million no sweat. Of course on all of this Eddie, really Mr. Big, is buying on margins, grabbing stock for say ten percent down with the expectations that it will generally keep going up for a while even with some blips. The blips start and eventually just to add salt to the wound the stock goes low enough that margin calls come into play and Mr. Big has to folk up another couple of hundred thou to cover his margins. Done. From there the stock takes a slow nosedive all along Eddie “calming” the guy with a new upturn soon. Never came as the stock when to about twenty cents and Eddie wrote the guy a check for about a thousand dollars to close out the account. I don’t think the guy committed suicide but I do believe that Sam said that he fled the country. Here is the beauty-there is, was no Acme Toy Company, no stock was ever issued-t was all mirrors-beautiful, even I can see the beauty of the thing. And everybody else, well, except Mr. Big probably could as well.               

That was the high side but of course that requires some skill and a deep understanding of human greed only a greed-head could understand and work through. Mostly, and after Eddie’s exploits got a serious airing at the water cooler that day, they began to talk about small time grifters starting from street guys hustling blind routines or from hunger stuff. Probably started with guys like this hustling their fellow student out of their milk money or throwing counterfeit slugs in change machines, stuff like that. That latter point is important because that idea, that grifter business enters into the plot of the film under review via small time Freddy, played by Steve Martin, whose idea of a big score is hustling some passenger on a train for dinner and carfare. Kids’ stuff. But Eddie, you remember Eddie of the big score, also enters the scene as the fast company for the big-time scam artist, Lawrence, played by million film Michael Caine, bilking rich widows and bored wives of enough money to keep his mansion and his expensive appetites afloat. The rubber will hit the road when these two go mano a mano as the action progresses.      

They start as strangers on a train to the French Rivera and Lawrence once he meets Freddy and find out that he is planning on squatting on his turf tries to move heaven and earth to get him out of town, and away from endangering his profit margins. And it works, well, almost works as you could figure since Freddy on his way out of town runs into one of those rich ladies Lawrence has been bilking based on his being an exiled prince in need of funds to get his kingdom back, or something like that. In order to avoid exposure as a fraud Lawrence agrees reluctantly to tutor Freddie on the high-side economics and style of the con game. And he doesn’t do badly but in a place like the Rivera only one king can survive.

Enter the con between cons, always a good watch when titans go at each other no holds barred. The object here is one Judy, really, Judy Colgate of the Colgate fortune they think. The bet $50,000 but the real stakes are the first guy to bed her wins, the other guy leaves sad sack out of town and back to cheap street and hustling winos for beer money. For a good while the battle of the titans is something to watch as they cut and feign, slash and burn and still get nowhere near a bedroom until finally Freddie makes a score, or think he has. Faking the old cripple routine that has melted many a woman’s heart her “love” has allowed him to walk, to walk right up to the bed.  Success. Well almost, well no actually. See Judy is from hunger or rather is a con artist on her own, the notorious Jackal that every con artist stays up late trying to emulate (to no success). After she cons Freddy into taking a shower before love-making she blows town. Or rather she heads over to Lawrence’s mansion where he, suddenly soft after finding she was no heiress and from hunger herself, gives her the 50K and she really does blow town after blowing the boys off and sending them back to school chastised. Nice, and in a real twist on her next caper to show no hard feeling she brings a boatload of suckers Freddie and Lawrence’s way as they head off into the sunset. Nice, yeah, everybody loves a con, no question, none whatsoever.

  

  

Everybody Loves A Con-Except When They Are The Conned-When At First You Practice To Deceive, Part II-Giuseppe Tonatore’s “The Best Offer” (2013)-A Film Review

Everybody Loves A Con-Except When They Are The Conned-When At First You Practice To Deceive, Part II-Giuseppe Tonatore’s “The Best Offer” (2013)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Laura Perkins

The Best Offer, starring Geoffrey Rush, Donald Sutherland, Jim Sturgess, Sylvia Hoeks, directed by Giuseppe Tonatorem 2013

Greg Green who has been the site manager of the on-line edition of this publication since 2017 has as part of his new regime, as a part of a policy that he had initiated when he was chief editor at American Film Gazette for many years encouraged his writers to let the reader into some of the internal workings of on-line publication. I have taken him up on that proposition as a matter of completeness since I believe that this review of 2013’s The Best Offer is in kindred spirit to another recently reviewed film in this space, 1991’s Deceived.  In that review I mentioned, based on my own personal experience, that every woman stands in unfocused fear and trepidation that the man she starts a serious relationship is for real, is not a con artist, a holy goof psycho con artist in that film and just an ordinary one in my case. Then this film came along which under ordinary circumstances would go to Seth Garth but which Greg switched up after seeing what I had written about in Deceived. (Seth the obvious choice because he has been the one over the years who has used the expression “everybody loves a con except the one being conned” the most and done a number of reviews where the con was central to the action of the film like in The Sting back in the 1970s.)

What intrigued Greg about my prior review was that I took a very strong stand that this idea related especially to women and wondered how I would deal with a case where as in The Best Offer a man was the subject of the con, a non-psycho con but a con nevertheless. (Greg apparently missed my note that men could tell their own takes on this proposition, but I was dealing with women.) Here is how the con worked, a beautiful con according to Sam Lowell who watched it with me and saw where the thing was heading long before I caught on to the “grift” (a Sam expression from corner boy days as a youth so he says). Virgil Oldman, played by sad-faced Geoffrey Rush, was a high -end top auctioneer for a major auction house who also had via his companion in crime, Billy played by now ancient Donald Sutherland, accumulated a gallery full of the best the art world had to offer in female portraits going back to at least the Renaissance. Their own scam was to downgrade the artist who painted the thing and grab a masterpiece for cheap money. Nice.

This accumulation of female portraits locked away from prying eyes and who knows what else had much to do with Virgil’s finicky ways and fear of women. That fear, subtly using that unspecified origin fear  is what sets the whole con up once he got a strange commission to auction off a valuable villa full of high-end paintings and fine furniture. The strange commission from a young woman who allegedly suffered from agoraphobia in the extreme as she led him on a merry chase before they finally met. The key here is Virgil’s kinship with a fellow odd-ball, a fellow person uncomfortable with dealing with people. Her turning out to be drop-dead beautiful was an add-on although the homely as sin Virgil should have at least had a few defenses up. In any case he got lured in little by little helped by the machinations of a master tinkerer, Robert, played by Jim Sturgess, who also was giving lovelorn Virgil advise on how to woe this young woman who has sparked his interest. Finally Virgil woos the young woman, Claire, played by fetching and fragile Sylvia Hoeks, who blossomed under his tutelage. A number of incidents, including a brutal street robbery by thugs near the villa bring Claire out into the world. Virgil will take his credits for her resurrection, including a few romps in the hay. And she will not object.                

Once Virgil felt that Claire felt comfortable in his high-end digs after bringing her along from her cocoon and a few nights of high-end love-making he brought her into his inner sanctum-the room full of female portraits which had previously sustained him. From there it was all downhill as Virgil decided to retire and devote himself to Claire and her well-being. One day he came home to put another painting in his collection room. Bingo-no paintings except one that Billy painted, you remember Billy who helped Virgil with their own con scheme. A painting allegedly of Claire’s mother which was in her possession as she and Virgil were going round and round. Shocked, Virgil finally realized that he has been set up by a cabal led by Billy assisted by Robert and Claire and a few incidental characters. That sends him to a mental institution and later to Prague where he foolishly expected the perfidious Claire to show up since she expressed an interest in a certain place in that town. A beautiful con according to Sam but to me just an extension of my idea about every woman that now applies to every man-he must have a deep-seeded dread that the woman he is dealing with is not real, is a con artist-or worse.    

Out In The 1940s Crime Noir Night-The Stuff Of Dreams- Harry’s Dreams- Richard Widmark's “ Night And The City"

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the film noir Night and the City.

DVD Review

Night And The City , Richard Widmark, Gene Tierney, Herbert Lom, directed by George Dassin, Paramount Studios, 1946

No question I am a film noir, especially a crime film noir, aficionado. Recently I have been on a tear reviewing various crime noir efforts and drawing comparisons between the ones that “speak” to me and those that, perhaps, should have been better left on the cutting room floor. The classics are easy: films like Out Of the Past, Gilda, The Lady From Shang-hai, and The Big Sleep need no additional comment from me as their plot lines stand on their own merits. Others, because they have a fetching, or wicked, for that matter, femme fatale to muddy the waters also get a pass, or as in Gilda a double nod for the plot and for the femme fatale. (Be still my heart, at the thought of Rita Hayworth, ah, dancing and singing, okay lip- synching, and looking, well, fetching while doing those difficult tasks.) Some, like the film reviewed here, Night and the City, while not strong on plot line or femme fatale-ness (ouch) get a nod for other reasons. Little reasons like having a young Harry Fabian, oops, Richard Widmark, practically scream out his grifter’s dreams with his expressive face. And have that face, the faces of other characters in the film, and places beautifully directed and captured on film. Not bad for a B-rated movie.

But now to the characterizations that make this such an interesting and well-acted (by Richard Widmark anyway) film. You know, know deep in your bones, if you were brought up in a working class or poor neighborhood, and maybe in other neighborhoods too, the grifter Harry Fabian played here by Widmark, The guy, and it was almost always a guy back in the days, who was smart, well smart enough, friendly, almost too friendly, always willing to accept a little dough, a little touch dough for his endeavor, always with a little larceny in his heart, always looking for easy street, always looking for the short cut to glory, and never quite getting there. And always, always, having to be fast of foot, and fast of sneak away to stay just the south side of the law when that surefire scheme also goes south. That’s our Harry.

And Harry was the guy that your mother warned you about from early on to not be like or you would "wind up just like him." And that was the magic mantra that held you in check, for a while anyway until you got your own Harry thoughts. And if I had to visualize my neighborhood Harrys then one Richard Widmark, a young Widmark would not be a bad way to do so. No question jut-jawed, slightly hazy wide-eyed, made for no heavy-lifting, light of foot and made to slip into small dark places Widmark would make the top of any crime noir aficionados idea of guy that fits the bill in this genre.

And grifter Harry had a dream which is central to the plot. The dream like those of a million other grifters, drifters and midnight sifters, hell just every poor guy looking to get out from under, to get out from under, and to, as Harry constantly put it, “be somebody.” Yes, that's the ticket, and that idea drives the story line (and Harry’s angst). See Harry’s dreams, Harry's immediate post World War II London-set dreams are not earth- shattering to say the least, at least on the face of it. Just to corner the wrestling racket market and become an important impresario to the plebeian masses that throng to such events. Problem is, as is always the grifter’s fate, the market s already cornered, already sewed up and already underworld muscle-protected.

So Harry tried an end-around using the head wrestling mobster’s (Herbert Lom) father to promote real wrestling, that is Greco-Roman wrestling which is said head mobster’s father’s specialty. Yes, I know already you can see Harry’s problem a mile away, even if he cannot. Other than about twelve hard-core Olympic Games aficionados nobody cares, wants to care, or will ever care about Greco-Roman wrestling. Certainly not against the masked marvel, bad boys, “real” wrestling that is (now) driven by teenage boys (and teenage girls, a little). But that is Harry’s opening and he is bound to take it, working his “magic” on the father who is some kind of Greco-roman aficionado maniac himself. The clash is on, including a stellar defense of Greco-Roman wrestling in the flesh by the old man.

Of course like all old men who try to do a young man’s work he overexerts himself and dies after the heat of battle. Such things happen, but for Harry this is the kiss of death because as it turns out head mobster was fond of his father, very fond. Harry’s number is therefore up. And watching the scenes and gritty faces of the actors in the process of that number being up drives the last portion of the film and makes this a true noir classic.

Note: No femme fatales here, obviously, but there are women who enter Harry’s life. One, an unhappy wife of a mid-level grafter, wants to use Harry to get out from under her own heavy burden of marriage to said grafter. More importantly, and a little incongruously, Harry has a straight girlfriend, of sorts, played by Gene Tierney, who loves/protects him through think and thin. And who Harry doesn’t have enough sense to stick by, except when he is in trouble- needing quick dough mainly. It was painful from my own knowledge of such things to see Harry rummaging through her pocketbook looking for dough to make some awry deal right, to allow him to “be somebody” for another five minutes. Whoa.