After the Fox is a 1966
BritishThe United Kingdom has had a major influence on modern cinema. The first moving pictures developed on celluloid film were made in Hyde Park, London in 1889 by William Friese Greene, a British inventor, who patented the process in 1890. It is generally regarded that the British film industry...
-
ItalianThe history of Italian cinema began just a few months after the Lumière brothers had patented their Cinematographe, when Pope Leo XIII was filmed for a few seconds in the act of blessing the camera.-Early years:...
comedy filmComedy film is a genre of film in which the main emphasis is on humour. They are designed to elicit laughter from the audience. Comedies are mostly light-hearted dramas and are made to amuse and entertain the audiences...
starring
Peter SellersRichard Henry Sellers, CBE , known as Peter Sellers, was a British comedian and actor. Perhaps best known as Chief Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther film series, he is also notable for playing three different characters in Dr...
and directed by
Vittorio De SicaVittorio De Sica was an Italian director and actor, a leading figure in the neorealist movement....
. The screenplay is in English, by
Neil SimonNeil Simon is an American playwright and screenwriter. He has written numerous Broadway plays, including Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues, and The Odd Couple. He won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Lost In Yonkers. He has written the screenplays for several of his plays that...
and De Sica's longtime collaborator Cesare Zavattini.
Despite its notable credits, the film was poorly received when it was released. It has since gained a cult following for its numerous in-jokes skewering pompous directors—including Cecil B. de Mille,
John HustonJohn Marcellus Huston was an American film director, screenwriter and actor. He wrote most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered classics: The Maltese Falcon , The Treasure of the Sierra Madre , Key Largo , The Asphalt Jungle , The African Queen , Moulin Rouge...
,
Federico FelliniFederico Fellini, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI , was an Italian film director and scriptwriter. Known for a distinct style that blends fantasy and baroque images, he is considered one of the most influential and widely revered filmmakers of the 20th century...
,
Michelangelo AntonioniMichelangelo Antonioni, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian modernist film director, screenwriter, editor and short story writer.- Personal life :...
and De Sica himself—vain film stars, their starstruck audiences, and pretentious film critics.
Plot
The story begins in
CairoCairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
with the hijacking of $3 million in gold bullion. The thieves need a way to smuggle the two tons of gold bars into Europe. There are only four master criminals considered able to smuggle the gold: one is French (but so crippled he can barely move his wheelchair); one is Irish (but so nearsighted that he is arrested after trying to hold up a police station instead of a bank); one is German (but so fat he can barely get through a door). The only man cunning enough to outwit
InterpolInterpol, whose full name is the International Criminal Police Organization – INTERPOL, is an organization facilitating international police cooperation...
is Aldo Vanucci (
Peter SellersRichard Henry Sellers, CBE , known as Peter Sellers, was a British comedian and actor. Perhaps best known as Chief Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther film series, he is also notable for playing three different characters in Dr...
), also known as The Fox, a master criminal with a talent for disguise.
Vanucci, who is in prison at the time of the robbery, knows about the smuggling contract but is reluctant to accept it, because he does not want to break the heart of his mother and young sister Gina (
Britt EklandBritt-Marie Ekland is a Swedish actress and singer, and a long time resident of the United Kingdom. She is best known for her roles as a Bond girl in The Man with the Golden Gun, and in the British cult horror film The Wicker Man, as well as her marriage to actor Peter Sellers, and her...
). But when his three sidekicks inform him that Gina has grown up and doesn't always return home from school, an enraged Vanucci vows to break out of prison. He succeeds by making the police believe that he is the prison doctor who has been tied up by Vanucci. When the guards accidentally bring the doctor and Vanucci face to face with each other, Vanucci rips off his false beard and flees. Once out, he goes home to his mother, who considers him to be a disgrace, and sister, who aspires to become a film actress. He makes contact with Okra (
Akim TamiroffAkim Mikhailovich Tamiroff was an Armenian actor. He won the first Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor.Tamiroff was born in Tiflis, Russian Empire , of Armenian ethnicity. He trained at the Moscow Art Theatre drama school. He arrived in the U.S. in 1923 on a tour with a troupe of actors...
), the original gold robber, and accepts the contract for smuggling the gold inside Italy on the condition that he will get 50 percent. Two policemen are constantly on his trail and Vanucci has to use many disguises and tricks to throw them off his trail. During one such escapade in a cinema, it suddenly strikes him that police offer protection to film crews. This idea forms the basis of his master plan.
Vanucci poses as an Italian neo-realist director named Federico Fabrizi. He plans to bring the gold ashore in broad daylight as part of a scene in an avant garde film. To give the picture an air of legitimacy, he cons over-the-hill American matinee idol Tony Powell (
Victor MatureVictor John Mature was an American stage, film and television actor.-Early life:Mature was born in Louisville, Kentucky to an Italian-speaking father from the town Pinzolo, in the Italian part of the former County of Tyrol , Marcello Gelindo Maturi, later Marcellus George Mature, a cutler,...
) to star in the film, which is blatantly titled
The Gold of Cairo. Fabrizi then enlists the starstruck population of Sevalio, a tiny fishing village, to unload the shipment. The plan works without any hiccups and the gold arrives safely inside Italy. Unfortunately for Vanucci, Okra double-crosses him and tries to get away with all the gold, without giving him his share; in a
Wacky RacesWacky Races is an animated television series produced by Hanna-Barbera. The series features 11 different cars racing against each other in various road rallies throughout North America, with each driver hoping to win the title of the "World's Wackiest Racer." Wacky Races ran on CBS from September...
like car chase, Okra; Vanucci; Powell and the Police chase one another through a smoke screen and all end up crashing into each other. After Vanucci is caught, all the misled villagers who helped him are accused of being co-conspirators, and Vanucci's "film" is used as evidence against them in court {a Italian film critic proclaims its a masterpiece}. Vanucci suffers a crisis of conscience and accepts his guilt in court, thereby vindicating the villagers-and proclaiming that he will escape from prison once again.
The film's final scene shows Vanucci escaping from prison yet again by impersonating the prison doctor-this time he ties the doctor up and takes his place. He then walks out when the prison guards think the doctor is Vanucci. As he attempts to remove the fake beard that is part of his disguise, he discovers that the beard is real. He turns to the camera, shattering the
fourth wallThe fourth wall is the imaginary "wall" at the front of the stage in a traditional three-walled box set in a proscenium theatre, through which the audience sees the action in the world of the play...
, and shouts, "The wrong man has escaped!"
Production
This was Neil Simon's first screenplay. At the time, he had three hit shows running on
BroadwayBroadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
:
Little MeLittle Me was the parody "confessional" self-indulgent autobiography of "Belle Poitrine" , subtitled The Intimate Memoirs of the Great Star of Stage, Screen and Television, by Patrick Dennis, who had achieved a great success with Auntie Mame...
,
Barefoot in the ParkThis article is about the Broadway production. For the film adaptation see Barefoot in the Park .Barefoot in the Park is a romantic comedy by Neil Simon. The original Broadway production, directed by Mike Nichols, opened October 23, 1963, with the four lead roles taken by actors Elizabeth Ashley ,...
, and
The Odd CoupleThe Odd Couple is a 1965 Broadway play by Neil Simon, followed by a successful film and television series, as well as other derivative works and spin offs, many featuring one or more of the same actors. The plot concerns two mismatched roommates, one neat and uptight, the other more easygoing and...
. Simon has said that he originally wanted to write a spoof of
art house filmsAn art film is the result of filmmaking which is typically a serious, independent film aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience...
such as
Last Year at MarienbadL'Année dernière à Marienbad is a 1961 French film directed by Alain Resnais from a screenplay by Alain Robbe-Grillet....
and
Michelangelo AntonioniMichelangelo Antonioni, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian modernist film director, screenwriter, editor and short story writer.- Personal life :...
's films, but the story evolved into the idea of a film-within-a-film. Aldo Vanucci brings to mind the fast-talking cons of
Phil SilversPhil Silvers was an American entertainer and comedy actor, known as "The King of Chutzpah." He is best known for starring in The Phil Silvers Show, a 1950s sitcom set on a U.S...
and the brilliant dialects of
Sid CaesarIsaac Sidney "Sid" Caesar is an Emmy award winning American comic actor and writer known as the leading man on the 1950s television series Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour, and to younger generations as Coach Calhoun in Grease and Grease 2.- Early life :Caesar was born in Yonkers, New York,...
. This is probably no coincidence since Simon wrote for both on television.
In his 1996 memoir
Rewrites, Simon recalled that an agent suggested Peter Sellers for the lead, while Simon preferred casting "an authentic Italian" like
Marcello MastroianniMarcello Vincenzo Domenico Mastroianni, Knight Grand Cross was an Italian film actor. His honours included British Film Academy Awards, Best Actor awards at the Cannes Film Festival and two Golden Globe Awards.- Personal life :...
or
Vittorio GassmanVittorio Gassman Knight Grand Cross OMRI , popularly known as Il Mattatore, was an Italian theatre and film actor and director...
. Sellers loved the script, however, and it was he who asked Vittorio De Sica to direct.
De Sica's interest in the project surprised Simon, who at first dismissed it as a way for the director to support his gambling habit. But De Sica said he saw a social statement to be made, namely how the pursuit of money corrupts even the arts. Simon believed De Sica also relished the opportunity to take potshots at the Italian film industry. De Sica insisted that Simon collaborate with Cesare Zavattini. Since neither spoke the other's language, the two writers worked through interpreters. "He had very clear, concise, and intelligent comments that I could readily understand and agree with", Simon wrote. Still, Simon worried that inserting social statements into what he considered a broad farce wouldn't do justice to either. Yet
After The Fox does touch on themes found in De Sica's earlier work, namely disillusionment and dignity.
Peter Sellers said that his main reason for doing the film was the chance to work with Vittorio De Sica. Sellers said he relied on De Sica to keep his characterizations on the mark.
Victor MatureVictor John Mature was an American stage, film and television actor.-Early life:Mature was born in Louisville, Kentucky to an Italian-speaking father from the town Pinzolo, in the Italian part of the former County of Tyrol , Marcello Gelindo Maturi, later Marcellus George Mature, a cutler,...
, who had retired five years earlier, was lured back to the screen by the prospect of parodying himself as Tony Powell. Mature was always a self-effacing star who had no delusions about his own work. At the height of his fame he applied for membership in the
Los Angeles Country ClubThe Los Angeles Country Club is a golf and country club in Los Angeles, California.- History :In the fall of 1897, a group of Los Angelenos organized a voluntary association to further the cause of one of Southern California's newest sports...
, but was told that the club did not accept actors. He replied: "Have you seen my work?" One of Tony's lines must have struck a chord with the then-53 year old actor: "I'd rather get laughs than sympathy." A clip from Mature's 1949 film
Easy Living (in which he plays an aging football star) appears in the film.
According to Neil Simon, Sellers demanded that his wife,
Britt EklandBritt-Marie Ekland is a Swedish actress and singer, and a long time resident of the United Kingdom. She is best known for her roles as a Bond girl in The Man with the Golden Gun, and in the British cult horror film The Wicker Man, as well as her marriage to actor Peter Sellers, and her...
, be cast as Gina, the Fox's sister. Ekland married Sellers in 1964. Ekland's looks and accent were wrong for the role, but to keep Sellers happy De Sica acquiesced. Still, Simon recalled, Ekland worked hard on the film. Sellers and Ekland made one other film together,
The BoboThe Bobo is a 1967 British comedy film starring Peter Sellers and co-starring his then-wife Britt Ekland. Based on the 1959 novel Olimpia by Burt Cole, also known as Thomas Dixon, Sellers is featured as the would-be singing matador, Juan Bautista...
(1967).
Also featured are
Akim TamiroffAkim Mikhailovich Tamiroff was an Armenian actor. He won the first Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor.Tamiroff was born in Tiflis, Russian Empire , of Armenian ethnicity. He trained at the Moscow Art Theatre drama school. He arrived in the U.S. in 1923 on a tour with a troupe of actors...
as Okra, the mastermind of the heist in Cairo;
Martin BalsamMartin Henry Balsam was an American actor. He is known for his Oscar-winning role as "Arnold Burns" in A Thousand Clowns and his role as "Detective Milton Arbogast" in Psycho.- Early life :...
as Tony's agent, Harry;
Maria Grazia BuccellaMaria Grazia Buccella, is a former Italian glamour model, Miss Italy contestant and film actress.Buccella screentested for the role of Domino Derval 1965 James Bond film Thunderball. The role eventually went to French actress, Claudine Auger...
as Okra's voluptuous accomplice; Lydia Brazzi as Mama Vanucci and
Lando BuzzancaGerlando Buzzanca is an Italian comedy actor.He left high school in Palermo when he was 16 years old, and moved to Rome to pursue his dream of becoming an actor...
as the chief of police in Sevalio. Simon recalled that the Italian supporting cast learned their lines phonetically. Tamiroff had been working on and off for
Orson WellesGeorge Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
filming
Don Quixote, playing
Sancho PanzaSancho Panza is a fictional character in the novel Don Quixote written by Spanish author Don Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra in 1605. Sancho acts as squire to Don Quixote, and provides comments throughout the novel, known as sanchismos, that are a combination of broad humour, ironic Spanish proverbs,...
. The film was never finished. Buccella was a former Miss Italy (1959) and placed third in the Miss Europe pageant. She was considered for the role of Domino in
ThunderballThunderball is the fourth spy film in the James Bond series starring Sean Connery as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. It is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Ian Fleming, which in turn was based on an original screenplay by Jack Whittingham...
. Lydia Brazzi was
Rossano Brazzi-Biography:Brazzi was born in Bologna to Adelmo and Maria Brazzi. He attended San Marco University in Florence, Italy, where he was raised from the age of four...
's wife. She was not a professional actress.
The budget for the film was $3 million, which included location shooting in the village of Sant' Angelo on
IschiaIschia is a volcanic island in the Tyrrhenian Sea. It lies at the northern end of the Gulf of Naples, about 30 km from the city of Naples. It is the largest of the Phlegrean Islands. Roughly trapezoidal in shape, it measures around 10 km east to west and 7 km north to south and has...
in the Bay of Naples as well as the construction of an exact replica of Rome's most famous street, the
Via VenetoVia Veneto is one of the most famous streets in Rome, Italy.The official name is via Vittorio Veneto, after the Battle of Vittorio Veneto....
, on the
CinecittàCinecittà is a large film studio in Rome that is considered the hub of Italian cinema.-History:The studios were founded in 1937 by Benito Mussolini and his head of cinema Luigi Freddi for propaganda purposes, under the slogan "Il cinema è l'arma più forte"...
lot. The Sevalio sequences were shot during the height of the tourist season. Reportedly the villagers of Sant' Angelo were so busy accommodating tourists that they had no time to appear as extras in the film. The extras were brought in from a neighboring village.
Simon lamented that De Sica insisted on using his own film editors, two middle-aged women who did not speak English and thus did not understand the jokes. The film was later re-cut in Rome by one of John Huston's favorite film editors, Russell Lloyd, but Simon believes more funny bits "are lying in a cutting room in Italy." The voices and accents of the Italian comic actors were dubbed in London, mainly by Robert Rieti, and edited in Rome by Malcolm Cooke, who had been a post-sync dialogue editor on
Lawrence of Arabia.
Simon summed up his opinion of the film: "To give the picture its due, it was funny in spots, innovative in its plot, and was well-intentioned. But a hit picture? Uh-uh...Still today
, After the Fox remains a cult favorite."
Burt BacharachBurt F. Bacharach is an American pianist, composer and music producer. He is known for his popular hit songs and compositions from the mid-1950s through the 1980s, with lyrics written by Hal David. Many of their hits were produced specifically for, and performed by, Dionne Warwick...
and
Hal DavidHarold Lane "Hal" David is an American lyricist. He grew up in Brooklyn, New York. David is best known for his collaborations with composer Burt Bacharach.-Career:...
wrote the scores and the title songs for both films. The title song "After the Fox", as performed by
The HolliesThe Hollies are an English pop and rock group, formed in Manchester in the early 1960s, though most of the band members are from throughout East Lancashire. Known for their distinctive vocal harmony style, they became one of the leading British groups of the 1960s and 1970s...
and Sellers, was released as a single in September 1966 (b/w "The Fox-Trot", United Artists UP1152) but did not chart.
Release
The film has some kinship to
What's New Pussycat?What's New Pussycat? is a 1965 comedy film directed by Clive Donner and starring Peter Sellers, Peter O'Toole, Romy Schneider, Capucine, Paula Prentiss and Ursula Andress. It was Woody Allen's film debut, as well as his first produced script. The Academy Award-nominated title song by Burt Bacharach...
, which was released the previous year and also starred Sellers. That film was the first written by
Woody AllenWoody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...
who, like Neil Simon, had been a staff writer for
Sid CaesarIsaac Sidney "Sid" Caesar is an Emmy award winning American comic actor and writer known as the leading man on the 1950s television series Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour, and to younger generations as Coach Calhoun in Grease and Grease 2.- Early life :Caesar was born in Yonkers, New York,...
. Even the advertising
taglineA tagline is a variant of a branding slogan typically used in marketing materials and advertising. The idea behind the concept is to create a memorable phrase that will sum up the tone and premise of a brand or product , or to reinforce the audience's memory of a product...
on the posters and trailer for
After The Fox proclaimed, "You Caught The Pussycat...Now Chase The Fox!". The poster art for both films was illustrated by
Frank FrazettaFrank Frazetta was an American fantasy and science fiction artist, noted for work in comic books, paperback book covers, paintings, posters, LP record album covers and other media...
.
Considering this was Simon's first original screenplay, parallels can be drawn with fellow Sid-Caesar-staff-writer
Mel BrooksMel Brooks is an American film director, screenwriter, composer, lyricist, comedian, actor and producer. He is best known as a creator of broad film farces and comic parodies. He began his career as a stand-up comic and as a writer for the early TV variety show Your Show of Shows...
's first screenplay,
The ProducersThe Producers is a 1968 American satirical dark comedy cult classic film written and directed by Mel Brooks. The film is set in the late 1960s and it tells the story of a theatrical producer and an accountant who want to produce a sure-fire Broadway flop...
, satirizing the Broadway aspect of show business and also featuring con-men and a final courtroom scene followed by a jail scene.
Influence
The scene in the film where Aldo speaks to Okra through the beautiful Maria Grazia Buccella inspired a similar scene in
Austin Powers in GoldmemberAustin Powers in Goldmember is a 2002 American spy comedy film and the third installment of the Austin Powers series starring Mike Myers in the title role. The movie was directed by Jay Roach, and co-written by Mike Myers and Michael McCullers. Myers also plays the roles of Dr. Evil, Goldmember,...
(2002), in which Austin Powers talks to
Foxxy CleopatraFoxxy Cleopatra, played by Beyoncé Knowles, was the female counterpart to Austin Powers in the third Austin Powers film: Austin Powers in Goldmember.-Austin Powers in Goldmember:...
through the
Nathan LaneNathan Lane is an American actor of stage and screen. He is best known for his roles as Mendy in The Lisbon Traviata, Albert in The Birdcage, Max Bialystock in the musical The Producers, Ernie Smuntz in MouseHunt, Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls, Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to...
character.
The Bollywood movie
Tees Maar KhanTees Maar Khan is an 2010 Hindi action comedy film directed by Farah Khan, starring Akshay Kumar, Katrina Kaif and Akshaye Khanna in the lead roles. Salman Khan and Anil Kapoor make special appearances in the film. The film was released on 24 December 2010...
is a remake of
After the Fox.
External links