Alex1963 Offline

60 Single Male from Perth       141
         

AFTER THE FOX

I loved this movie (After The Fox) when I was a 13yo but the last time I watched some of it was when it was playing on a TV channel in a waiting room in a hospital interspersed with ads and I got that really flat feeling you get when you realise something is nowhere near as funny as remembered. That was more than 10 years ago. Written by the Broadway playwright star Neil Simon (Odd Couple, Barefoot In the Park) and directed by neo-realist film legend Vittorio Di Sica- (The Bicycle Thief, The Children Are Watching us) - and that's a major reason why it flopped with film critics - the expectation being much higher than what it delivered. The flimsy plot has Peter Sellers playing Aldo Vanucci (The Fox) a master criminal who escapes from jail and poses as film director Frederico Fabrizi to make "The Gold of Sevalio" as cover for bringing in an actual shipment of stolen gold. Along the way there's some half-arsed attempt to make comment on pretentious European art cinema, or something - it doesn't work but some of the scenes stand up.

1) Vanucci, on the run from police after his prison escape, attaches himself to a group of tourists at a restaurant to negotiate a deal with Okra via his female accomplice.



2) Vanucci (posing as film director Frederico Fabrizi) works the vanity of the local policeman to get him back on side for permission to make his hoax movie by making him believe there is an important role for him.