Fellini / Fulci

This afternoon I watched the 1955 Fellini film Il Bidone, about a trio of con-men whose speciality is posing as priests in order to con poor farmers. At the end of the film one of the trio, now working with different partners, attempts to swindle his erstwhile colleagues by claiming he did not take the money from their last marks, who had a crippled, near-saintly daughter. The others beat him and leave him half way down a slope, some distance from the road. He manages to finally crawl up to the road, but fails to attract the attention of a passing group and then slump to the ground:









Watching the sequence I could not help think of Maciara's death in Fulci's Non si sevizia un paperino:











Significantly, both films focus on a character defined in terms of his or her problematic relationship to children, Il Bidone's Augosto having attempted to keep the money for himself so he could give it to his estranged daughter and Duckling's Maciara having been unable to live a normal life as part of the community following the death of her child and the other villagers' suspicions around her.