A mess but one that's partly redeemed by a real star performance, "After the Fox" was a daft caper comedy made in Italy by none other than Vittorio De Sica with a screenplay by the American playwright Neil Simon and starring Peter Sellers as an incompetent Italian criminal, (lots of disguises and silly voices), though in the end it isn't Sellers who redeems the film but Victor Mature, wonderful as a vain, ageing movie star, talked by Sellers, posing as a Neo-Realist director, into making a movie as cover for a heist. Subtle it isn't and as a satire on the movie business it never rises above pantomime, (De Dica appears as himself). It's also only sporadically funny, proving that farce, even with Sellers in the lead, wasn't really De Sica's thing.
Review of After the Fox
