about bunco: the art of the con may 5 -20, 1999 photo: JACKIE BROWN

This program was curated by Ray Schnitzer and Kent Jones. Thanks to John Cocchi for contributing stills from his personal collection. back to main program calendar Bunco. Scam. Grift. Swindle. Con. One of the most satisfying strains in American movies since the dawn of sound has been the con game. Beginning in the early 30s, when conning became a key ingredient in the racy, lived-in vision of urban life at Warner Brothers, this rich sub-genre has had remarkable cinematic staying power. Among other things, con games are feasts of language: Cagney and Blondell's rapid-fire patter in BLONDE CRAZY; Preston's joyous revivalist exhortations in THE MUSIC MAN; the quip-trading between Fonda, Stanwyck and Coburn, always poised between elegance and raunch, in THE LADY EVE; the acid verbal stylings of the amoral GRIFTERS trio; Mantegna telling Crouse that she "crumbed the play" in HOUSE OF GAMES, the ne plus ultra of con game movies, in which identity itself becomes a risky proposition.

THE LADY EVE I LOVE YOU AGAIN

Acting genuine and being genuine. Hiding and revealing, or pretending to reveal in order to hide more effectively. Con games are pure moral theater, houses of mirrors in which amorality plays upon trust, even trust among thieves. Few things in recent movies are as thrilling as the spectacle of Pam Grier's Jackie Brown testing her nerve in a cool con game with both the DEA and a loose-cannon drug lord. And on the other side of the coin is the thrill of the con, the sheer exhilaration. It's what lures Fonda away from his snakes in THE LADY EVE and Lindsay Crouse into the lair of the "big, bad conmen" in HOUSE OF GAMES, it's what draws Myrna Loy back to soon-to-be-ex-husband William Powell in I LOVE YOU AGAIN and what thrills any audience to the tantalizing complications of THE STING. As stylish masquerade that sometimes stripteases to naked truth, the tradition of con artistry can be traced all the way back to "hellfire" American tales like Mark Twain's The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Herman Melville's Confidence-Man--or even further, to Hamlet, who never "crumbed the play"! To savor the best bunco artists in the movie biz, grab a ticket to our very own House of Games, the Walter Reade Theater, between May 5 and May 20!