After The Fox

After the Fox (Italian: Caccia alla volpe) is a 1966 English-Italian heist comedy movie directed by Vittorio De Sica and starring Peter Sellers, Victor Mature and Britt Ekland.

Plot

Outside of Cairo, Okra uses a bikini-clad accomplice as a distraction to hijack $3 million in gold bullion. The thieves need a way to smuggle the two tons of gold bars into Europe. Aldo Vanucci, a master of disguise known as The Fox, is one of the few men who can handle the assignment, but he is in prison.

Vanucci is reluctant to accept the job for fear of disgracing his mother and young sister Gina. When his three sidekicks inform him that Gina has grown up and does not always come home after school, an enraged, overprotective Vanucci vows to escape. He impersonates the prison doctor and flees with the aid of his gang. At home, his mother tells him that Gina is working on the street, which he takes to mean that Gina is a prostitute. But he discovers that Gina is merely acting in a low-budget film shooting on the Via Veneto. Vanucci realizes that the smuggling job will improve his family's life. He makes contact with Okra and his female accomplice and agrees to smuggle the gold into Italy for half of the take. Two policemen are constantly on Vanucci's trail, however, but he uses disguises and tricks to evade them.

After watching a crowd mob the over-the-hill American matinée idol Tony Powell, it strikes Vanucci that movie stars and film crews are idolized and have free rein in society. This insight forms the basis of his plan. Posing as an Italian neo-realist director named Federico Fabrizi, he intends to bring the gold ashore in broad daylight as a scene in an avant-garde film. To give the picture an air of legitimacy, he cons Powell to star in the film, which is blatantly titled The Gold of Cairo (a play on De Sica's 1954 film The Gold of Naples). Powell's agent, Harry, is suspicious of Fabrizi, but his vain client wants to do the film. Fabrizi enlists the starstruck population of Sevalio, a tiny fishing village, to unload the shipment, but when the boat carrying the gold is delayed, Fabrizi must actually shoot scenes for his phony film to maintain the ruse.

The ship finally arrives, and the townspeople unload the gold, but Okra double-crosses Vanucci and drives off with the gold. A slapstick car chase ensues and Okra, Vanucci, and the police crash into each other. Vanucci, Tony Powell, Gina, Okra, and the villagers are accused of being co-conspirators. Vanucci's "film" is shown as evidence in court, where a film critic proclaims the disjointed footage to be a masterpiece. Vanucci confesses his guilt, thereby exonerating the villagers, but vows to escape from prison again. He escapes by impersonating the prison doctor again, this time tying the doctor up in his cell and walking out of the prison in his place. But when he attempts to remove his fake beard, Vanucci discovers that the beard is real and exclaims, "The wrong man has escaped!"

Cast

• Peter Sellers as Aldo Vanucci / Federico Fabrizi
• Victor Mature as Tony Powell
• Britt Ekland as Gina Vanucci / Gina Romantica
• Martin Balsam as Harry Granoff
• Akim Tamiroff as Okra
• Vittorio De Sica as himself
• The band The Hollies sang the title song together with Peter Sellers.
• The humorously animated title sequence was designed by Maurice Binder, best known for the titles of the James Bond movies.
• The movie was partly shot in the village of Sant'Angelo during the peak tourist season. The villagers were so busy with tourists that residents of the surrounding settlements had to be used as extras.