Cast:
Richard Farnsworth (Bill Miner / George Edwards), Jackie Burroughs (Katherine 'Kate' Flynn), Ken Pogue (Jack Budd), Wayne Robson (Shorty (William) Dunn), Timothy Webber (Sergeant Fernie), Gary Reineke (Pinkerton Detective Seavy), and Sean Sullivan (Newspaper Editor) Directed by Phillip Borsos.
Review:
It seemed prudent to try and make an effort at celebrating a Canadian movie to start out July because there are little gems of curiosity that came around from the country up north. Phillip Borsos was born in Australia to a Hungarian sculptor and English nurse that moved to British Columbia in Canada when he was five years old. With an early interest in filming from a young age, he studied at the Vancouver School of Art. Borsos made a handful of commercials and documentaries, with Nails (1979) getting enough attention to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short. He was first interested in doing this film when he saw picture of Bill Miner in a restaurant. He credited Jan Troell with giving him the confidence to do a feature film himself. Production started in early 1980 with getting casting, unit selling (selling for thousands of dollars each) and the script (done by John Hunter) ready. Richard Farnsworth was cast in the title role when Harry Dean Stanton dropped out due to wanting to be in One from the Heart. For taking Stanton from under them, American Zoetrope allowed them the use of support facilities. Film was done in the winter before going through extensive editing in 1981 (at one point, the editor fell ill for months) without even having a distributor, although United Artists Classics eventually got the bid. Released in the winter of 1982 in its native Canada before a March 1983 release in the States, the movie was a mild hit with audiences at the time. He ultimately would do four more feature films of varying quality: the American thriller The Mean Season (1985), the Canada/US One Magic Christmas (1985), the biodrama Bethune: The Making of a Hero (1990), and Far from Home: The Adventures of Yellow Dog (1995), which was released shortly before his death from leukemia in 1995 at the age of 41. The Toronto International Film Festival rated The Grey Fox as among the best Canadian films of all time for their lists in 1984 and 1993). In 2004, the Whistler Film Festival named their main awards Competition program for Canadian films after Borsos. In recent years, it was restored and given a proper release on home media*.
The real Bill Miner was a curiosity unto himself. The Michigan native served time in jail by the time he was 20 years old and eventually did enough stagecoach robberies to get him into San Quentin, where he did in fact stay until 1901, when he moved to the province of British Columbia, now 55 years old, which is where the film starts its story of the man associated with the first train robbery in the province. With the role falling to Richard Farnsworth, what you get here is a lovely Western filled with a rich look at the B.C. frontier and a look at a man out of time as a bandit in the new century. You won't see much bloodshed on this frontier, but you will still see a landscape of emotional relevance that studies a man who lives the way he knows best: an offbeat bandit. Farnsworth had appeared in countless movies over the past few decades as a stuntman-turned-actor, and it is his confident spirit that you see in his eyes and demeanor that make you understand the nature of being in his shoes, a man warped in time that sees the moving picture and regains the vigor to be what he desires most: a sly fox in a land of hens. We're enchanted by a gentleman who happens to love robbing things. Playfully fiddling with history (who says he didn't encounter a woman as free-spirited as Burroughs) as an elegy for a proud and vulnerable rascal that doesn't even move a muscle when he, well, knows when he is beat. In the real story, the wrong car of a train got robbed in 1904 that saw him make off with little money and kidney pills before he and his gang were subject to a successful manhunt and conviction. Miner did in fact escape the penitentiary in 1907 and never did get captured in Canada, although his attempts in robberies in the States eventually led to him going to prison (and escaping, twice). While back in jail in 1913, he died from gastritis from drinking bad water; he was 66 years old. But the film closes on him in the best place possible: adrift and, most importantly, free. At 92 minutes with a lovely Canadian landscape to gaze at and plenty of spirit to carry the way, there's a little bit of everything worth watching for all involved to encounter.
Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.
Happy Canada Day. I know I've skipped a Canada Day or two in the past few years, but I felt it was a good time to get one in and spotlight a worthwhile Canadian movie because I care about you folks. See you soon.
Interview for the film: Canadian Radio Sanctuary: Richard Farnsworth and Phillip Borsos on their 1982 movie The Grey Fox.
*As late as 2014 apparently, this movie wasn't on DVD and only on iTunes and VHS, as evidenced by this - O Canada Blogathon: The Grey Fox (1982) – MOON IN GEMINI
