tgd@floyd.UUCP (Tom Dennehy) (09/12/83)
I saw The Grey Fox in Motown, NJ (Morristown for folks having
trouble pronouncing DiTROYT) and was very impressed, indeed.
The movie concerns Bill Miner, the "gentleman bandit", who spent
the last 33 years of the 19th century in San Quentin for robbing
stagecoaches. We meet Bill as he is released from prison, when
finding no stagecoaches around, he takes to robbing trains. We
follow his odyssey across the Pacific Northwest into Canada where
boy robs trains, boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy goes back
to prison, boy (getting into spoiler territory, nuff said).
The film is as handsome to look at as anything I've ever seen.
Particularly magical is a montage sequence of the growing love
between Bill and the photographer Miss Flynn, with him singing
in the bathtub for background music. Alternating interiors and
exteriors, brilliant sunlight and purple twilights, and a perfectly
framed absolutely symmetric shot of them dancing in a gazebo.
A sequence walking through town on Christmas morning sticks in
the mind, as well as a magnificant shot of a dead man on a fence
(of all things). The body appears to hang in mid air.
But this is much more than a "Days of Heaven"esque travelogue of
gee whiz scenery. The performances of Bill Miner and Miss Flynn
are wonderful (I've got to start writing down names). They both
have expressive faces and a musical quality to their voices. On
the character side of the street, good supporting performances are
given as Shorty Dubb ("short,nervous,dirty,and unintelligent"),
Sgt. Preston of the Yukon who does right by everyone, and a slimy
Pinkerton detective.
The costuming makes the whole endeavor look like a Ralph Lauren
commercial - in fact you can slip into this film as easily as a
worn leather jeacket or a pair of jeans :-)
You'd better slip into it soon. Givent he size of the audience, it
won't be around much longer. Enjoy.
Tom Dennehy BTL WHippany {floyd!tgd} with time running out...Holbrook.ES@PARC-MAXC.ARPA@sri-unix.UUCP (09/13/83)
Date: 04 Sep 83 16:03:30 PDT (Sun) Message-ID: <280.431564610@UCI> To: movies@UCI Cc: jsweet@UCI Subject: The Grey Fox From: Jerry Sweet <jsweet@uci> An interesting movie. It's about a stagecoach robber named Bill Miner who was released from San Quentin around 1901 after 33 years, only to find that he had no useful skills, that even stagecoaches had disappeared from the scene. The story concerns his attempts to develop, um, new methods of dealing with modern technology and his relationships with people in a small Canadian town. To say much more about the plot risks spoiling it. The pace of the movie is slow. It's about 1.5 hours, but feels like a full-length movie. I only mention this because the length of the movie is just right. If it were any longer, the audience might fidget. The scenery (the Cascades?) is wonderful, but not lingered over, also to the good. Unlike some movies dealing with crime and punishment (only a small part of TGF), there is no attempt to win affection for either side. Bill Miner is not a sympathetic character, or at least not terribly so. Possibly the most sympathetic charracter is one of a M.P. Corporal who gets to know Miner. Upshot: see this movie. $5 at the Edwards at Harbor & Adams. BTW...if you do see this movie, take a look at the departing audience. There's something different about it, but I'm not sure what. If you can put your finger on it, let me know. --Jerry
bstempleton@watmath.UUCP (Brad Templeton) (09/19/83)
Will be on the tube this season, I saw CBC advertise it. -- Brad Templeton - Waterloo, Ont. (519) 886-7304