Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

TaryBiggBall It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Dan Scerpella Since so many folks have laid out the plot I will skip that.My first viewing of this was in grade school in the 60's and it was the first Sellers film I recall seeing. This perspective gave me the advantage of not having any basis for comparison and thus not having any expectations going in. (Since then I have seen the film about a dozen times.)To me this compares favorably to "A Shot in the Dark" because the plot was smart, the characters were believable, and it was not slapstick as were the Pink Panther films that became Seller's trademark. Contrary to what some have said I found Sellers and Eklund very believable as Italians, and the fact it was filmed on location with a largely Italian cast by an Italian director gives it a look and feel that we don't see with American films, even back then.If one has Italian relations as I do, the humor was very believable as well. But for me the part most well portrayed is how normal people as well as the glitterati become star struck by movies and fame, and this film's self knowledge of the addictive appeal of being on the silver screen was what made the film for me. The entire premise for the film is Vannucci's understanding of this, that people would drop their guard and behave in a very silly way for a shot at immortalization on film. Even the films hilarious penultimate scene hammers movie critics unmercifully.Sellers was brilliant and as many have repeated, Victor Mature was brilliant as well as a good sport for taking on a role which made fun of his own persona. There simply are no weak performances here even from the secondary characters.This is a movie I plan to buy for my DVD collection.

trz1951 "The fox is out of the tree! Gooda morning! More sand in the desert! And so on. What a funny movie; it's one of those I have to watch every time it's on television and at least once a year on DVD. And don't fortget the CD soundtrack; it instantly puts me in a good mood thinking of Sevalio anda the incrediblya handsomea Tony Powella!I first saw this during Christmas break in high school, 1966 I think, and loved it then. I was always a Victor Mature fan, especially Demetrius and the Gladiators, Kiss of Death, but he takes the cake here. What a great job. Martin Balsam, too; in fact the whole cast was superb. A thoroughly enjoyable movie.

moonspinner55 Jailed in an Italian prison, the Fox--one of the last of the world's master criminals--escapes from his cell upon hearing of his sister's escapades; he gets the bright idea of going after a stolen fortune in gold bars recently smuggled out of Cairo, plotting to intercept the shipment at sea while pretending to be a film director making a neo-realist love story in an Italian village. Screenwriter Neil Simon and director Vittorio De Sica poking fun at European movie-making, with Peter Sellers in the disguise-laden lead. Overlong comedy should work, and intermittently it does, however De Sica's pacing is leaden and Simon tries working too much into the scenario (which culminates with a slapstick car chase followed by a pseudo-serious courtroom finale). Sprinkled with funny asides, the picture is utterly inoffensive and innocuous...and it should have been much better. Burt Bacharach composed the forgettable score (his and Hal David's title song performed by The Hollies with Peter Sellers is easily their weakest). ** from ****

Robert J. Maxwell I caught this on its first run in Honolulu after spending two years in a place with no movie theaters. I laughed all the way through it. I was certain that enthusiasm was the result of all the previous deprivation, and some of it was, but the luster hasn't worn off this film on subsequent viewings. It's still funny and at time hilarious.Federico Fabrizi (Peter Sellers) is an escaped convict who must find a way to unload a horde of stolen gold from a ship. He gets his friends together, they find a small fishing village suitable for bringing stolen gold ashore, con the aging movie star Tony Powell (Victor Mature) and his agent (Martin Balsam) into cooperating, claiming they are going to make a "neorealist" movie about unloading stolen gold. Seller's sister, Gina Romantica (Britt Ekland) will play opposite Tony Powell. (Mature: What's neorealism?" Balsam: "No money.") All of the villagers, including the mayor and the police chief, are used in the fake movie to unload the real stolen gold. Everybody gets caught. Sellers takes the rap and escapes again. The end.Now, it isn't surprising that Neal Simon has written a funny screenplay based on his play. He was at the top of his game at the time, and nobody is better at barbed exchanges than Neal Simon at his best. What's amazing about this film is that it is so far removed from Simon's usual bailiwick, the comic contretemps of New York Jews. Here he deals with Italian culture and he's got it just about perfect. The film, directed by Vittorio DeSica, who should know neorealism when he sees it, pokes fun at empty Italian bravado, the almost incestuous obsession with protecting the virtue of one's sister, the allegiance to national laws as a sometime thing, the police as little more than a largely ineffective nuisance, the pretentiousness of Italian films of the period (Fellini and Antonioni are skewered), pompous film critics who see art where there be no art, the vanity of aging actors (Mature: "I have the pupils of an eighteen-year-old boy!"), the spell cast over ordinary nobodies by film-making, and a host of other targets.It's not just Simon's dialog that makes this outstanding. I can't believe that the comedy would be so effective without DeSica's willingness to puncture the Italian film industry and the culture that embraces it.Example: The fake film has been hastily thrown together and is shown as evidence in court. And, good God, what a horrifying abortion it is. The gang know nothing about movies. We see about five minutes of black and white film. They've used wide angle shots so that human faces turn into bulging gargoyles. In some scenes the camera is on its side. There are utterly pointless shots (sometimes in slow or accelerated motion) of people doing nothing of importance, of actors running nowhere ("no matter how fast you run, you can't run away from yourself"), of Peter Seller's behind as he bends over, of rocks, of surf, of nothing. When the film flaps around the take-up reel, a man in the courtroom leaps to his feet in the applauding wildly. He announces that he's a film critic and that Sellers is a "a genius! A primitive genius! The best film to come out of Italy in forty years! I cried! I cried like a BABY!" (The judge throws him out and call him crazy.) I can't continue this without laughing, but I have to mention one more gag. Sellers real name is Aldo Venucci and in his home he is bragging to his mother and sister that he is ashamed of nothing. To prove it, he throws open the window and shouts "I am Aldo VENUCCI!" In the street below, two of the gang are shielding their faces and they hiss up a warning, "The po-lice! The po-lice!" Sellers instantly dashes from the window and hides in a bathtub.Consistently funny, a long jab at phoniness in its every manifestation. Recommended without qualification if you're in the mood for laughs.