The Great Race (1965)

 

The Great Race is a sweet if disjointed homage to the kind of slapstick comedies that were common during the silent movie era. Overacting is the order of the day, and Jack Lemmon (in a dual role) outdoes everyone else on the screen when it comes to scenery chewing. Sadly, at a running time of 2 hours, 40 minutes, The Great Race drags a bit too much to be consistently funny. The overall plot is a simple one: two turn-of-the-last-century daredevils join a race from New York to Paris, driving westward across the United States and crossing to Europe via Alaska. The villainous Professor Fate (Lemmon) and his sidekick Max (Peter Falk, not quite as funny here as he was as Columbo) face off against the Great Leslie (Tony Curtis, rather stolid when compared to his former Some Like It Hot co-star) and his sidekick Hezekiah (Keenan Wynn). The race quickly becomes a face-off between the Great Leslie, always clad in white, and Professor Fate, dressed in black. It’s very easy to pick sides when everything, even the cars, is color-coded so obviously. Along for the ride is Natalie Wood’s Maggie DuBois (an odd amalgam of Tennessee Williams character names, isn’t it?), a reporter for the New York Sentinel and an advocate for women’s rights. By the way, there is an interesting subplot involving a group of suffragettes led by the wife of editor of the New York Sentinel newspaper (the wife is played by Vivian Vance of I Love Lucy fame), but the emphasis on women’s rights fizzles as the movie progresses. Even Wood’s “emancipated” character is inconsistently presented, being grossly objectified throughout the last third of the movie. She’s wearing just undergarments, sometimes wet ones, but the closest to objectification of the male characters is when Curtis goes shirtless during a duel. Sometimes you wonder if Hollywood was directly trying to undermine the feminist movement. If you present the suffragette movement but also put your “leading lady” on display as a sex object for a significant amount of screen time, have you really helped the cause of women? Speaking of Wood’s character, where would she have acquired such a large and fabulous wardrobe? The Edith Head gowns are, as always, stunning, and Maggie always has an outfit to fit the occasion, no matter how small her luggage is. The race itself is an odd one, taking the cars through such out-of-the-way places as Boracho and Grommet and Potsdorf. Apparently, you don’t pass through any major cities when you drive from New York to Paris. The Great Race spends quite a bit of time in Potsdorf, primarily because Professor Fate is a doppelganger for Crown Prince Friedrich (also played by Lemmon), who is having his coronation as king the next day. He’s a bit of a drunk and rather loose-limbed in his mannerisms, and he has several people who are trying to keep him from taking control of the throne of Carpania. There’s an attempt to swap out Professor Fate for the Crown Prince, but it’s all rather silly stuff with a lot of unnecessary moments such as the attempted torture of Hezekiah and a change in equipment in the middle of a duel. The Potsdorf subplot ends with a rather epic pie fight that lasts for four minutes and must have taken a long team to clean up after. The film tries to cram a lot of stuff into its long running time, so we have a saloon brawl that lasts about seven minutes and a sequence on an ice floe that goes on for almost six minutes. Throw in a wandering polar bear and a car that emits tons of black smoke and even a sing-along opportunity, and you’ve got a muddled series of moments that don’t necessarily contribute to the impact of the film overall. There’s even a little bit of homoeroticism in a couple of places. It certainly seems like the Crown Prince is enamored with the Great Leslie; he looks as if he’d like Curtis’s white-clad daredevil to “tuck him in” at bedtime, particularly since he feels the General isn’t very good at that task. And Falk’s Max seems at times similarly infatuated with his boss. He tries to kiss Professor Fate when the Great Leslie and Maggie are kissing at the end of the race in Paris. As with most of the details, the movie doesn’t do much with those moments. They pass by quickly, requiring more attention than most moviegoers would give them. That leaves some interesting characters and performances will small contributions. I’ve already mentioned Vance’s role as suffragette Hester Goodbody (again, is this helping the feminist cause?), but her husband is played by the reliable Arthur O’Connell. Dorothy Provine has a small but bright scene as saloon singer Lily Olay, and her performance of “He Shouldn’t-A, Hadn’t-A, Oughtn’t-A Swang on Me!” is a real showstopper. Even Denver Pyle shows up in a cameo as the Sheriff of Boracho. The Great Race throws a lot at you as a viewer. Some of it works, but ultimately, there might just be too much to make it coherent overall.

Oscar Win: Best Sound Effects

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Color Cinematography, Best Sound, Best Film Editing, and Best Original Song (“The Sweetheart Tree”)