- Title: The Great Race
- IMDb: link
Throwback Thursday takes us to the most expensive comedy ever made at the time it was released and featured what has come to be known as the greatest pie fight ever captured on-screen. With 1965’s The Great Race director Blake Edwards (known for his over-the-top comedies) delivers his love letter to silent films in a battle of good and evil across the globe. Edwards fills, one might even suggest overfills, the film with silent movie gags and tropes including a ballroom brawl, sword fights, characters mistaken for lookalikes, slapstick and cartoonish humor (including the villains blowing up), and running gags.
Our protagonist is our classic hero The Great Leslie (Tony Curtis) always virtuous, always successful, and always dressed in white. Our antagonist is Professor Fate (Jack Lemmon) complete with black clothing, mustache, and minion (Peter Falk) out to best the hero no matter the level of dirty tricks he must resort to.
Along with mostly unnamed other drivers, the pair square off on a race from New York to Paris (inspired by the 1908 race). Throwing an added element of chaos into events is reporter Maggie DuBois (Natalie Wood) out to get the story and push the issue of women’s rights to the forefront of conversation. And, to get her way, she’s not above some tricks of her own.
While enjoyable, clocking in with a 160-minute running time, The Great Race can be a bit much at times. I don’t think Edwards ever heard the phrase less is sometimes more, but if he did it wasn’t something he ever took to heart. Along with honoring silent movies one could also argue it celebrated Hollywood excess to an almost absurd scale including the custom cars, variety of sets, and costumes built for the film. The pie fight alone cost $200,000 and 4,000 pies for four-minutes of screentime.
Although both a critical and financial flop, The Great Race has earned back some love over the years as something of a cult classic along with being the inspiration behind the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Wacky Races which is arguably less cartoonish than the movie.
Watch the trailer
