9/1/13 The Great Race, Best Sound Effects, 1965
I loved this movie from beginning to end, yes, all 160 minutes of it. As often as I warn you about extra-long movies (which may very well be a new search category), I hardly noticed the length at all. There are laughs from minute that poor Jack Lemmon and Peter Falk get smacked on the heads by a collapsing hot air balloon. Let me start at the beginning:
The Great Race was directed by Blake Edwards, and when I looked at his filmography, I was stunned by the number of films he wrote, directed and/or produced beyond the
Pink Panther series, where he employs his comedic expertise again;
Breakfast at Tiffany's (which will be reviewed here in the future),
10, Operation Petticoat, Days of Wine and Roses (also with Jack Lemmon). Tony Curtis plays The Great Leslie, a handsome daredevil, who's kind of like David Niven meets Dudley Do Right meets the Road Runner; Jack Lemmon is Professor Fate who is the antithesis to Leslie, Dastardly Dan crossed with Wiley Coyote and Daffy Duck. Leslie is almost always dressed in white and Professor Fate almost always in black, even visually setting up the conflicts ahead. Natalie Wood plays a Nellie Bly-like character, an intrepid female reporter, Maggie DuBois, who is not afraid to compete with the men, especially when it comes to her story. It is 1908 and to help promote a new automobile, Leslie suggests a race, from New York to Paris (going westward); of course, Professor Fate and Max (Peter Falk) enter and conspire to sabotage all the cars. Even when you know what is coming, it's hilarious. Blake doesn't try to surprise you, there's no element of suspense, his delivery (and the actors', of course) is impeccable. Curtis and Lemmon are perfect foils for one another, Curtis, is elegant, with very good diction, manners, and an annoying habit of looking like an oasis of calm; Lemmon is animated, occasionally hysterical with a maniacal laugh and very bad luck. The movie has an element of the Keystone Cops and the road trip fun that came later in
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Did I mention that they cross to Russia via Alaska?
If you're a fan of American television in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, you may recognize some faces under the makeup and scratch your head, thinking, hmmm, where do I know that face? Well, here are some people to look for: Vivian Vance who was in
I Love Lucy; Denver Pyle, Uncle Jesse
Dukes of Hazard; Larry Storch from
F Troop and so many other shows; Ross Martin, Artemis Gordon from
The Wild, Wild West (one of my all time favorites). Good comedy holds up ten, fifteen or forty years later, and that is the case here.
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| The race begins - Brooklyn Bridge, NY (it didn't actually start here, this is just for color) |
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| St. Petersburg, Russia |
Oh, You're a Vegetable: stories of an around the world adventure
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| The end of the race - Paris, France |
