Screen Hustles, Grifts and Stings

Screen Hustles, Grifts and Stings identifies recurrent themes and techniques of the con film, suggests precedents in literature and discusses the perennial appeal of the con man for readers and viewers alike. Core studies span from film (Catch Me If You Can, Paper Moon, House of Games) to television (Hustle), from Noir (The Grifters) to Romantic Comedy (Gambit). Frequently, the execution of the con is only finely distinguishable from the conduct of a legitimate profession and, challengingly, a mark is often shown to be culpable in his or her undoing. The best con films, it is suggested, invite re-watching and reward the viewer accordingly: who is complicit and when? How and where is the con achieved? When is the viewer party to the con? And what, if any, moral is to be drawn?

Amy Sargeant teaches in the London Program for Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. She was formerly Reader in Film at the University of Warwick and Lecturer in the History of Film and Visual Media at Birkbeck College, University of London. Her major publications include The Servant (BFI/Palgrave, 2011 - nominated for a BAFTSS prize); British Cinema: A Critical History (BFI, 2005) and (co-edited with Claire Monk) British Historical Cinema: History, Heritage and the Costume Film (Routledge, 2001).