Les plus belles escroqueries du monde (1964)

Five episodes depict the lives of crooks and swindlers in five different metropolises: 1. Episode: The Five Benefactors of Fumiko (Les cinq bienfaiteurs de Fumiko) – Directed by Hiromichi Horikawa A young geisha meets an old man in a bar in Tokyo. He used to work as a composer and wrote a famous song. The man boasts that he spent a fortune on his new set of platinum dentures, and carries thick bundles of banknotes around in his pocket. When the geisha notices this, she lets him take her to his apartment. It turns out to be small, dirty, and untidy. The man claims offhandedly that he owns the entire building and lives in the caretaker’s apartment only to save money. When the man chokes on noodles because of his actually poor-fitting dentures, the geisha steals what she thinks is his valuable set of dentures, intending to exchange it for cash at a pawnshop. She then goes to a jewelry store, where—believing she can later trade the platinum dentures for money at the pawnshop—she spends all her savings on an expensive pearl necklace she has wanted for a long time. A short while later, the police arrest her on suspicion of murdering the old man. A police officer finds the old man’s dentures in her apartment. However, it turns out the dentures are not made of platinum and that the man was actually poor. The woman is then released. 2. Episode: The River of Diamonds (La rivière de diamants) – Directed by Roman Polański A young woman goes for a walk in Amsterdam. She visits a diamond-cutting workshop and looks at an expensive necklace in a shop window, far beyond her means. When she meets a wealthy diplomat, she lets him seduce her. The two go to his house, where she learns that the diplomat is married and has a daughter. His family and the household staff are currently away. When the diplomat has to go to work, they arrange to meet again later. The woman then visits the jeweler whose shop window she saw at the beginning and asks him to come to the diplomat’s house later, presenting the diplomat’s business card, which he had given her earlier, and passing herself off as his wife. The diplomat and the woman meet and eventually return to his house, where they play tag. She takes a bath while the diplomat gets ready for more fun in the bathroom. When the jeweler arrives and puts the expensive necklace on her, the woman runs out of the house with it, only to exchange it a short while later for a parrot she likes. 3. Episode: The Plan (La feuille de route) – Directed by Ugo Gregoretti When a young prostitute refuses to show herself naked to the local police chief, she has to leave Naples because of his false statement. She secretly returns, however, and asks her former pimp for help. But he drives her away too, saying there is nothing he can do against the police chief. Her path then crosses that of a law student, who has an idea: if he marries her to a man from the local old people’s home, she can legally stay in the city. Her pimp agrees to the plan, intending to keep her living with him and working for him. To put the idea into practice on a larger scale, he also wants to set up a large brothel business. To that end, he brings back many prostitutes who were also forced to leave the city in the past and marries them off to men from the old people’s home. When the pimp throws out of his house the old man officially married to his prostitute, the student ensures that the old man reports the pimp to the police for “adultery” and “abandonment of the marital home.” 4. Episode: The Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower (L’homme qui vendit la Tour Eiffel) – Directed by Claude Chabrol A man named Alain des Arcys has car trouble outside the home of a wealthy German. When he asks the German for help, he learns that the man is obsessed with the Eiffel Tower. Alain then pretends that France plans to auction off the Eiffel Tower and invites him to Paris. There, with the help of a few friends, Alain manages to persuade the naive German to hand them a large sum of money, with which the German has supposedly now bought the city’s landmark. When the German drives to the Eiffel Tower, the police arrest him because he refuses to pay for tickets to “his” Eiffel Tower. 5. Episode: The Great Swindler (Le grand escroc) – Directed by Jean-Luc Godard Patricia Leacock, a young American journalist, is arrested in the market in Marrakesh as she is about to pay with counterfeit money. During the ensuing questioning, she says she does not know how she came to possess the counterfeit money, whereupon she is released. Shortly afterward, she tracks down the counterfeiter. As a curious reporter, she films and interviews him. He justifies what he does by saying that, unlike politicians, who usually talk a lot and do little, he practices hands-on charity by giving beggars the money he earns from his counterfeiting.