‘After The Fox’ or — Identity Problem?
‘After The Fox’ has so much going for it… on paper anyway. The script is by Neil Simon, the score by Burt Bacharach; it’s directed by Vittorio De Sica, has gorgeous cinematography capturing beautiful Italian locations and Peter Sellers was at his prime. What a combination! It’s just a shame the end result, whilst intermittently chuckle-inducing, can be irritating as hell… and I think the issue might be Sellers.
You see, I have a confession to make in that as much as I enjoy Peter Sellers on screen I’ve never felt truly comfortable watching the guy. The comedic skill is there but little humanity. Even his most successful character (and one I love), Inspector Clouseau, isn’t particularly likeable and at his worst Sellers can be downright obnoxious and irritating; I think it’s his tendency to combine overt cliché with forced technique. This problem is writ large in ‘After The Fox’ (1966) with Sellers playing an Italian (the first big mistake!) criminal who is not only deeply unpleasant but is less a character and more a flailing amalgam of Sellers’ quirks and tricks driven by an insecurity so desperate it’s palpably visible.
The story is cute if slight. Some stolen gold needs to be smuggled into Italy and master criminal Aldo Vanucci, aka The Fox, has hit on a plan — he’ll pretend to shoot an Italian neorealist movie as a cover for smuggling in the bullion. To sell the rouse Vanucci poses as avant-garde director Federico Fabrizi shooting his latest movie ‘The Gold of Cairo’. Vanucci then ropes in aging American movie star Tony Powell (Victor Mature) for credibility whilst, in typical neorealist fashion, using the town’s locals as extras to unload the gold in broad daylight.
It’s a fun idea but it all gets very meta (and not for the better) with ‘After The Fox’s director, Vittorio De Sica, even popping up at one point as himself followed by a swath of jokes about Italian cinema, specifically Antonioni and alienation. True, there’s some funny moments, especially Vanucci’s inspired decision to have the actors do “something” instead of “nothing”, but even a huge Italian cinema fan as myself was starting to find it all a little wearing after a while. In fact, some of the Italian stereotypes were so grating it became quite tiresome, and I’m not in any way Italian.
Plus, for all its Sixties’ hipness ‘After The Fox’ feels incredibly old-fashioned, already the product of a bygone era. Some of Simon’s jokes are clunky and De Sica’s directing, whilst suited for intimate relationships, seems to struggle to contain all the wackiness at play, almost pulling everything back in time a few years by his shooting style alone. Still, De Sica manages to execute some great moments, mostly when dealing with the crowds of locals (were they a blessed relief from having to work with Sellers?), that injects some life into proceedings.
And it’s not all bad as ‘After The Fox’ contains a number of funny scenes, an especially nice one centering around Italian cinema’s technique of overdubbing voices as Vanucci talks to Okra via a female intermediary, and Victor Mature is genuinely having fun sending himself up, although it’s Lando Buzzanca who gives the most enjoyable performance as the small town’s square-jawed police chief. And for all its flaws ‘After The Fox’ at least has a clear story meaning it isn’t the sprawling, ill-disciplined mess that other Sixties comedies could be such as ‘Casino Royale’ (1967). The story hangs together even if it does take its sweet time to actually get going (the plot, proper, doesn’t kick in until over an hour in!).
At the end of the film (spoilers) Vanucci breaks free again from prison only to look straight into the camera and, as he struggles to pull his fake beard off which he discovers is now a real one, declares “The wrong man has escaped!” That sums up the picture for me and could also explain why I could never lose myself in the character of Vanucci, possibly because Sellers is too busy furiously doing that work for us.
