May Review: The Great Race (1965)

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1900s, 1960's, american west, arthur o'connell, austria, blake edwards, cars, cartoon, classic, classic comedy, classic Hollywood, Comedy, cult classic, dick dastardly, dorothy provine, edith head, feature, feature film, feature presentation, film, film review, henry mancini, hezekiah, intermission, jack lemmon, Keenan Wynn, larry storch, laurel and hardy, looney tunes, maggie dubois, max, movie, movie review, natalie wood, New York, obscure movie, Paris, peter falk, pie fight, prince hapnik, prisoner of zenda, professor fate, race, racing, racing game, review, roadshow, silent comedy, silent movie, silent movies, slapstick, slapstick comedy, the great leslie, the great pie fight, the great race, the prisoner of zenda, the sweetheart tree, tony curtis, travel, traveling, vivian vance, wacky races, Warner Bros., Warner Brothers, west

“Push the button, Max!”
– Professor Fate, usually before a catastrophe of his doing strikes

To say things have gotten tumultuous since the last review would be a gross understatement. But we’re not here to discuss today’s upheavals, important as they are. Let’s just take a moment to reflect and laugh. Lord knows we could use a good one right now.

Directed by esteemed comedy director and Hollywood bad boy Blake Edwards, The Great Race is a loving pastiche and send-up of silent comedies and melodramas from the early days of cinema (classic Laurel and Hardy in particular; the film even opens with a dedication to them). Thankfully the movie itself is not silent. What kind of genius madman would try to make a silent comedy in the late twentieth century?

Believe it or not, The Great Race was inspired by a real automobile race from New York to Paris that took place in 1908. Some of the more outlandish elements of the race like floating on icebergs across the sea were even based on genuine ideas that were proposed for the race but wisely ruled out. Despite its star power and a huge budget, The Great Race was a flop on release and quickly fell into obscurity. Critics assumed it was trying to ride off the popularity of Those Magnificent Men And Their Flying Machines, another big-budget all-star comedy with a similar premise. I’m more inclined to believe that its failure was due to the roadshow phenomenon that boomed in the late ’50s dying out at this point. It would be several more years until the epic format of a three-hour film with an overture and intermission faded from theaters completely, but audiences were already losing interest, and that rung The Great Race’s knell. Regardless, it’s garnered something of a cult fanbase from automobile aficionados (the original cars are still displayed at conventions), fans of classic cinematic comedies, and it even inspired the wildly popular Hanna-Barbera cartoon Wacky Races.

So if it wasn’t for this –

– we wouldn’t have this.

A Long-Overdue Apology

I’m sorry.

There’s no other way to put it.

I’m sorry I’ve fallen so far behind in my reviews that nearly four months have gone by since I’ve published one. That’s not to say I haven’t been working on them, heavens no. Unfortunately, the stress of trying to balance responsibilities and creative standards left me with a severe case of burnout. And that’s on top of everything else that’s gone on since, for good or for ill:

• Putting together everything for the storyboard class I would be teaching, including mastering Google Classroom and putting general paperwork in order was exhausting.
• I was asked to teach another online art class, this time by the folks who run an annual city-wide art show I’ve been a part of for the past two years.
• I’m partaking in SCBWI’S Summer Conference since they’re holding it online instead of Los Angeles this year, which meant revamping my portfolio again, completing new artwork and preparing to meet and query new contacts in the field.
• My sister got (legally) married in my backyard the first week of July and I stood in as a witness/Maid of Honor. Fun! Not so fun was the large amount of people she invited for the barbecue afterwards who didn’t wear masks or abide by social distancing rules. I suffer from allergies and spent the following fortnight thinking every cough and scratchy throat meant the end was near.
• I had to marathon the entire first season of The Umbrella Academy in less than a week in order to edit a full video review of it for Krimson Rogue before Season 2 premiered. (On the plus side, now that I’ve finally watched the show for myself, I’m excited for the next season!)
• I got into the top ten of the Mx Disney editing competition and I’ve been going into editing overdrive near the end of each month to meet the crazy deadlines.
• Anxiety. That is all.
• And no, I have not watched Hamilton yet. I will once I finally have two and a half hours to fully invest myself in something that doesn’t directly involve me shaping it.

So here’s how it’s going to go. When it comes to this blog, I’m still going in the order things were meant to, even if they are horribly off-schedule. The next review finished will be The Great Race, followed by the (very late) fifth anniversary review, and then I’ll be taking some time to kick off the series of Faerie Tale Theatre reviews, which should be out by the end of the summer at the latest. My original plans for the fifth anniversary was to revisit the live-action Beauty and the Beast remake and share my thoughts on it, but two things happened:

1. I have A LOT to say about the remake which means it would be a very, very long read; so long in fact that I may have to split it up. Also I wasn’t entirely looking forward to watching it again and didn’t want to mark such a momentous occasion by nagging in 6000-plus words.
2. This past weekend I finally got some down time to myself and wound up revisiting a classic that has long been a favorite. It’s resonated with me at the best of times, yet none more so than at that very moment. Maybe I was in the right frame of mind, maybe it was the timing, but after everything that’s happened in my creative pursuits up until then, I was so moved by this picture’s simple message that I was compelled to write about it.

And there you have it. They may not be excuses, but they are something. One plan I also had for the rest of the year was to look at the first five movies I reviewed and see if they (and what I initially wrote about them) held up, though that might have to be swept off the table too unless you really want to them also.

Hope you’re all having a safe and fun summer, and hopefully I’ll see you soon.