FANTASIA OBSCURA: Blake Edwards’ Overlooked Cross-Country Comedy Extravaganza
There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Sometimes, the fastest runner does not win the race; the funniest, however…
The Great Race (1965)
Distributed by: Warner Brothers
Directed by: Blake Edwards
Everyone likes a good tech duel, right? It’s as American as apple pie.
Years before we had Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos dueling over who would set the agenda for our next steps into space, we had such throw downs as the frenemy relationship between Jobs and Gates, the contest for the Hearst Transcontinental Prize, Marsh and Cope’s Bone Wars, and of course the Edison-Tesla contest. It’s amazing that we don’t get more films that go into such duels.
Probably because when we do, we end up with efforts like this one…
After an opening credits for the film done in the style of old-time lantern slides, we open sometime early in the 20th century, unspecified but for the sake of a guess, say, 1908. We watch as the Great Leslie (Tony Curtis) is about to dangle from a hot air balloon in a straitjacket, during which he will attempt to free himself and return to earth safely.
His effort, however, is nearly sabotaged by Professor Fate (Jack Lemmon) and his sidekick Max Meen (Peter Falk), who tries to bust his balloon (literally). When the effort fails, Fate tries his own attention getting stunt, being hooked from the ground and pulled into the air by an airplane, a trick which… Well, let’s just say he’s no Great Leslie…
We get a couple more stunts by Leslie that succeed despite Fate’s sabotage, and Fate’s stunts going spectacularly wrong, before Leslie tries to fight his ennui by gathering the heads of the nescient automobile industry together. In an effort to promote American technology, lest it be swamped by the likes of Daimler and Peugeot, he proposes an event to show off American know-how: a car race, from New York to Paris (based on an actual such race held in 1908).
Leslie has in mind a special car, designed to his specifications, which Fate tries his best to spy on, and maybe sabotage:
Fate then goes with plan B: He designs the Hannibal Twin-8, a car with all the latest features, like a smokescreen device and a mini-cannon. He decides that if he can’t cheat or sabotage Leslie, he can at least beat him at the race, which as it draws closer becomes a sensation.
Such a sensation, in fact, that it draws the attention of a vibrant Suffragette, one Maggie Dubois (Natalie Wood), who wants to get involved with the race. Her first effort is to try and convince Leslie to have her as part of his crew, to cover the event on behalf of the newspaper run by Henry Goodbody (Arthur O’Connell):
When this fails, as well as an effort to try and hitch a ride with Fate (of course), she decides to enter the race herself. And, as one of the drivers who did not get scratched right away by Fate’s sabotage, she stays competitive for the early portion, before her car breaks down and she has to hitch a ride with Leslie and his mechanic, Hezekiah Sturdy (Keenan Wynn).
From there the two teams compete not only with each other, but hazards on the trail. This includes a stop in the western town of Boracho and an encounter with black hat Texas Jack (Larry Storch) which leads to a major saloon fight; getting stuck together on an ice floe that drifts from Alaska to Siberia; and an extended stop in the kingdom of Carpania, where the villainous Baron Rolfe von Stuppe (Ross Martin) is attempting to overthrow the satyric and incompetent Crown Prince Frederick, which gave Lemmon a lot more to do in the film:
The descriptive “a lot” can be applied quite liberally to the film. Edwards, with the momentum generated by his success with Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Pink Panther, andA Shot in the Dark, was originally looking at doing the film for six million dollars with United Artists, but when they declared the project too rich for their blood, Warner Brothers swooped in to back it, giving him carte blanche for the project. By the end of production, the film’s budget went up to 12 million dollars (about $113M in today’s currency), and it showed in every shot.
Edwards took his crew beyond the Warner stages, to shoot in Death Valley, Salzburg and Paris. He also took them to places they hadn’t anticipated; both Curtis and Ross had to learn fencing for their duel, when Edwards insisted on not having doubles do their scenes. And he brought them into the biggest pie fight put on film to that time, with 4,000 pies being flung for a scene that took five days to film.
Edwards on set as the pie fight scene wound down, messily
The result was a movie that actually does pull a few laughs together despite itself. On the one hand, it’s big and over-the-top, which can repel anyone allergic to excess. Edwards clearly let the power of a big studio that couldn’t say no to him go to his head, which is most obvious in the long detour the film takes in Carpania that feels like a self-contained feature that pays homage to The Prisoner of Zenda.
On the other hand, Edwards gets quite a bit out of his cast, and from some of them he gets pure gold. Lemmon in particular as Fate, a man who is half as evil as he is incompetent, nearly steals the film, with an assist from his Frederick. Wood and Falk also give good broad comedy in their roles, and Curtis, who’s given the unenviable role of being the default straight man, holds his own. And with decent goofiness evoked by Storch, Martin, and Vivian Vance as Goodbody’s wife, who is far more emancipated than Dubois could ever hope to be, without even trying, the gags manage to land more often than not.
While the jokes could find the funny spot the way the pies found their targets, the film didn’t find much of an audience during its initial run. Coming to screens four months after Fox’s own retro tech contest comedy, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines…, the audience decided that one such film per year was enough. It took a critical drubbing at the time, being compared unfavorably to the other movie, making this Edwards’ first critical flop.
Then again, since most of the bigger tech duels get decided by which product makes it first to market, this was probably appropriate all said…
NEXT TIME: ET phones home, not like this guy. What, you mother and I gave you that much tsuris before you left, huh…?
