THE GREAT RACE [1965 / 2014] [Warner Archive Collection] [Blu-ray] [USA Release]
The Movie with the 20,000 Mile or One-Million-Laugh Guarantee!
Crank your engines! With a roar, a splutter and a pop (and more Academy Award® winning Best Sound Effects), and see drivers wheel westward in a wacky turn-of-the-century automobiles for a New York-to-Paris race (westward across America, the Bering Strait and Russia). Ahead lies 20,000 miles, a barroom brawl, a sinking iceberg, 2,357 pies in the face and incalculable laughs.
Blake Edwards turns a marvellous cast loose, on a round-the-world highway booby-trapped by some of the funniest gags ever. Jack Lemon as the nasty evil Professor Fate and Peter Falk as his dim henchman Maximillian "Max" Meen. Tony Curtis is their good-guy nemesis Leslie Gallant III aka "The Great Leslie." And Natalie Wood is a cheroot-puffing suffragette reporter Maggie DuBois. All scored to the music of four-time Academy Award® winning composer Henry Mancini. And ravishingly brought to you in a brand new digital image transfer, plus a revitalised digital audio from restored elements. ‘THE GREAT RACE’ is great fun!
FILM FACT No.1: Awards and Nominations: 1966 Academy Awards®: Win: Best Effects and Sound Effects for Treg Brown. Nominated: Best Cinematography in Color for Russell B. Harlan. Nominated: Best Sound for George Groves (Warner Bros. SSD). Nominated: Best Film Editing for Ralph E. Winters. Nominated: Best Music for an Original Song for Henry Mancini (music) and Johnny Mercer (lyrics) for the song "The Sweetheart Tree." 1966 Golden Globes: Nominated: Best Motion Picture in a Comedy or Musical. Nominated: Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical for Jack Lemmon. Nominated: Best Original Song for Henry Mancini (music) and Johnny Mercer (lyrics) for the song: "The Sweetheart Tree." Nominated: Best Original Score for Henry Mancini. 1996 Laurel Awards: Nominated: Golden Laurel Awards for Best Comedy. Nominated: Golden Laurel Awards for Male Comedy Performance for Jack Lemmon. Nominated: Golden Laurel Awards for Best Original Song for Henry Mancini (music) and Johnny Mercer (lyrics) for the song "The Sweetheart Tree." 1966 Motion Picture Sound Editors, USA: Win: Golden Reel Award for Best Sound Editing for a Feature Film. 1966 Writers Guild of America: Nominated: WGA Award (Screen) for Best Written American Comedy for Arthur A. Ross.
FILM FACT No.2: ‘THE GREAT RACE’ is known for one scene that was promoted as "the greatest pie fight ever." Director Blake Edwards based the film on the 1908 New York to Paris Race, very loosely interpreted. On the 12th February, 1908, the "Greatest Auto Race" began with six entrants, starting in New York City and racing westward across three continents. The destination was Paris, making it the first around-the-world automobile race. Only the approximate race route and the general time period were borrowed by Blake Edwards in his effort to make "the funniest comedy ever." Blake Edwards a studious admirer of silent film, and dedicated the film to film comedians Laurel and Hardy. ‘THE GREAT RACE’ incorporated a great many silent era visual gags, along with slapstick, Double entendre [A double entendre is a figure of speech or a particular way of wording that is devised to have a double meaning], parodies, and absurdities. The film includes such time-worn scenes as a barroom brawl, the tent of the desert sheik, a sword fight, and the laboratory of the mad scientist. The unintended consequences of Professor Fate's order, "Push the button, Max!" and is a running gag, along with the spotless invulnerability of "The Great Leslie." Blake Edwards poked fun at later films and literature as well. The saloon brawl scene was a parody of the western film genre, and a plot detour launched during the final third of the film was a direct parody of the novel, ‘The Prisoner of Zenda,’and of the 1937 film version of the story, wherein a traveler is a lookalike for the king and stands in for him.
Cast: Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood, Peter Falk, Keenan Wynn, Arthur O'Connell, Vivian Vance, Dorothy Provine, Larry Storch, Ross Martin, George Macready, Marvin Kaplan, Hal Smith, Denver Pyle, William Bryant, Ken Wales, Victor Adamson (uncredited), Richard Alexander (uncredited), Leon Alton (uncredited), Walter Bacon (uncredited), Brandon Beach (uncredited), Herman Belmonte (uncredited), Bill Borzage (uncredited), Paul Bryar (uncredited), Robert Carson (uncredited), Bill Catching (uncredited), Noble 'Kid' Chissell (uncredited), Charles Cirillo (uncredited), Joseph Crehan (uncredited), Blake Edwards (uncredited), Frank Ellis (uncredited), Joe Evans (uncredited), Joe Ferrante (uncredited), Bob Folkerson (uncredited), Fritz Ford (uncredited), George Ford (uncredited), Charles Fredericks (uncredited), Jack Gordon (uncredited), Sol Gorss (uncredited), Duke Green (uncredited), Silver Harr (uncredited), Sam Harris (uncredited), Harry Harvey (uncredited), Al Haskell (uncredited), Chester Hayes (uncredited), Chuck Hayward (uncredited), Jack Henderson (uncredited), Lars Hensen (uncredited), Bob Herron (uncredited), Chuck Hicks (uncredited), George Holmes (uncredited), Charles Horvath (uncredited), Clegg Hoyt (uncredited), Roy Jenson (uncredited), Kenner G. Kemp (uncredited), Patricia King (uncredited), Frank Kreig (uncredited), Mike Lally (uncredited), Carl M. Leviness (uncredited), King Lockwood (uncredited), Carey Loftin (uncredited), Mathew McCue (uncredited), Philo McCullough (uncredited), Francis McDonald (uncredited), Rod McGaughy (uncredited), J. Edward McKinley (uncredited), King Mojave (uncredited), Boyd 'Red' Morgan (uncredited), Richard Mosier (uncredited), Hal Needham (uncredited), Joyce Nizzari (uncredited), Daniel Nunez (uncredited), Owen Orr (uncredited), Joe Palma (uncredited), Harvey Parry (uncredited), Gil Perkins (uncredited), Jack Perkins (uncredited), Charles Perry (uncredited), Fred Rapport (uncredited), Raoul Retzer (uncredited), John Rice (uncredited), Hal Riddle (uncredited), Christopher Riordan (uncredited), Robert Robinson (uncredited), Clark Ross (uncredited), Danny Sands (uncredited), Maria Schroeder (uncredited), Jerry Schumacher (uncredited), Charles Seel (uncredited), Sarah Selby (uncredited), Alex Sharp (uncredited), Johnny Silver (uncredited), Leslie Sketchley (uncredited), Carl Sklover (uncredited), Paul Smith (uncredited), Tom Smith (uncredited), Cap Somers (uncredited), Tom Steele (uncredited), Robert R. Stephenson (uncredited), Norman Stevans (uncredited), Bert Stevens (uncredited), Art Stewart (uncredited), Frank D. Strong (uncredited), Charles Sullivan (uncredited), Arthur Tovey (uncredited), George Tracy (uncredited), John Truax (uncredited), Dale Van Sickel (uncredited), Max Wagner (uncredited), Jesse Wayne (uncredited) and Harry Wilson (uncredited)
Director: Blake Edwards
Producers: Martin Jurow and Richard Crockett
Screenplay: Arthur A. Ross (screenplay/story) and Blake Edwards (original story)
Composer: Henry Mancini
Cinematography: Russell B. Harlan, A.S.C. (Director of Photography)
Image Resolution: 1080p (Technicolor)
Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1 (Panavision)
Audio: English: 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio
English: 2.0 Dolby Digital Stereo Audio
Subtitles: English SDH
Running Time: 160 minutes
Number of discs: 1
Region: All Regions
Studio: Warner Archive Collection
Andrew’s Blu-ray Review: ‘THE GREAT RACE’ [1965] is Blake Edwards' loving tribute to the slapstick films of old, and is dedicated to the comedy genius duo “Laurel and Mr. Hardy” but it owes more to the style of earlier silent comedies with a dastardly villain, a spotless hero and outrageous and thrilling stunts.
Tony Curtis is the hero Leslie Gallant III aka "The Great Leslie" and is a daredevil and adventurer who enters the 1908 automobile race with his "The Leslie Special" from New York City to Paris and offers the Webber Motor Car Company the opportunity to build an automobile to make the journey, starting in New York City and going west to end at the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Leslie Gallant III aka "The Great Leslie" wears only immaculately white clothing and his teeth gleam in the sunlight. In pursuit Leslie Gallant III aka "The Great Leslie" is the arch-nemesis Professor Fate [Jack Lemmon] and his henchman Maximillian "Max" Meen [Peter Falk]. Fate always wears black including a black top hat and thick moustache. Professor Fate/Prince Friedrich Hapnick car, is the "The Hannibal Twin-8" and is fitted with the latest and most devious gizmo devices such as a smoke screen and even a cannon. No old-timey chase comedy would be complete without a damsel in distress and here it is Maggie Dubois [Natalie Wood], an early feminist, who sets out to cover the race and ends up shuttling between the attentions of Leslie Gallant III aka "The Great Leslie" and the clutches of the evil Professor Fate.
Director and co-writer Blake Edwards had just made two of the most popular comedies of the early sixties ‘The Pink Panther’ [1963] and ‘A Shot in the Dark’ [1964] which featured Peter Seller's clumsy Inspector Clouseau. With ‘The Great Race,’ the director wanted to salute the source of that slapstick on a grand scale. “This is a kind of cartoon I've presented with real-live people,” Blake Edwards remarked. “There is a humour in this now that was somewhat inherent in ‘The Pink Panther’ and ‘A Shot in the Dark’ but there is almost an unbelievable humour in that you allow things to happen to people, that they could not survive in a million years, for the sake of a laugh. You never explain it. You simply go back and they're all right and you start it again. It's much stylised and yet that's the difficulty of it, to keep the wild style and still maintain enough believability so that you become involved.”
Not content just to recreate silent-era comedy, Blake Edwards changes genres with the racers' locations. Their trek through the American West turns the film into a parody of Westerns. When they arrive in the mythical European country of Carpania, where Professor Fate's resemblance to the goofy Prince Friedrich Hapnick [Jack Lemmon in a dual role] sparks a spoof of ‘The Prisoner of Zenda’ [1952].
Blake Edwards' fought with the producing studio Warner Bros. throughout the making of ‘THE GREAT RACE’ and the result doubled the cost of what was already a large and expensive film. The film was popular, but not enough to make back its cost and began a string of films for Blake Edwards that were failures at the box office but subsequently became a cult classic such as ‘The Party’ [1968] which I think is one the worst and most atrocious Peter Sellers films I have ever viewed and it is not at all funny. ‘THE GREAT RACE’ has also developed a steadily growing cult following and has inspired other comedies, most notably The Beatles ‘Yellow Submarine’ [1968], whose lead villain also has a henchman named Max, and Hanna-Barbera's cartoon television series “Wacky Races” that replaced Max with a sniggering dog named Muttley.
While Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis don't have as many opportunities to play off of each other in ‘THE GREAT RACE,’ they capture the same great goofy rhythm they did in the Billy Wilder classic ‘Some Like it Hot’ [1959] a feeling that's simultaneously loose and precise. Peter Falk is the perfect partner to Jack Lemmon, letting him chew up scenery while he draws plenty of his own attention by never playing exactly straight. Though she is slightly miscast, mostly because she can never let loose quite as thoroughly as her co-stars, Natalie Wood is nevertheless charming, funny and manages to hold her own.
There are a lot of people with mixed feelings about pie fights in films, with the exception of Laurel and Hardy's ‘Battle of the Century’ [1927], which may be impossible to top, but Blake Edwards stages one so epic that it's impossible not to be impressed and it took five days to film, and 4,000 pies, to film this infamous classic scene. Quite an undertaking, but ultimately funny, because Tony Curtis wanders freely among the flying desserts without getting a single smudge on his white costume, until near the end of this section of the film. All those pies for one long joke – wow! The silent film comedians would totally approve.
But there’s great news for Warner Archive Collection edition Blu-ray, is a peerless mastering effort. This is becoming something of a habit for the Warner Archive Collection, and one definitely championed by yours truly. I just sincerely wish Warner Archive Collection would invest in more film titles like ‘THE GREAT RACE,’ especially from its vast catalogue. Could we hope in the future for titles like ‘Around the World in Eighty Days’ [1956], ‘The Student Prince’ [1954], ‘Goodbye Mr. Chips’ [1939], ‘The Prisoner of Zenda’ [1937], ‘Pride and Prejudice’ [1940] and so on, and so forth?
THE GREAT RACE MUSIC TRACK LIST
THE SWEETHEART TREE (Words by Johnny Mercer) (Music by Henry Mancini) [Performed by Natalie Wood (dubbed by Jackie Ward) (uncredited) and Robert Bain guitar accompanist] (uncredited)
HE SHOULDN’T-A, HADN’T-A, OUGHTN’T-A SWANG ON ME! (Words by Johnny Mercer) (Music by Henry Mancini) [Performed by Dorothy Provine] (uncredited)
Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (uncredited) (Written by Johann Sebastian Bach)
THE DESERT SONG (uncredited) (Music by Sigmund Romberg) (Lyrics by Otto A. Harbach and Oscar Hammerstein II)
“IT LOOKS LIKE A BIG NIGHT TONIGHT” (Music by Egbert Van Alstyne) (Lyrics by Harry Williams)
BIG NIGHT TONIGHT (uncredited) [Sung by the girls in the saloon]
Tales from the Vienna Woods (uncredited) (Written by Johann Strauss) [Performed at the Potzdorf Ball]
The Beautiful Blue Danube (uncredited) (Written by Johann Strauss) [Performed at the Potzdorf Ball]
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Blu-ray Image Quality – ‘THE GREAT RACE’ appears in its proper aspect ratio of 2.40:1 on this Blu-ray Disc. The film barely showed its age via this excellent 1080p image transfer. Sharpness almost always came across well. A few wide shots displayed a minor amount of softness, but those issues appeared infrequently and they usually seemed connected to various effects and camera techniques that made them inevitable. The vast majority of the film displayed terrific delineation. I detected no signs of jagged edges or moiré effects, and edge haloes were a non-factor; some appeared due to process shots, but again, those were unavoidable and they didn’t stem from transfer-related issues. Grain seemed natural, and print flaws failed to appear, as this remained a smooth, clean image. Colours looked truly marvellous. Race boasted a vivid and broad palette that favoured many bright and lively hues, and the Blu-ray replicated them with vivacity. The tones always looked accurate and distinct, and they showed no signs of bleeding, noise, or other issues. Black levels also seemed very deep and rich, while shadow detail was appropriately heavy but not overly dense. Even some “day for night” shots came across with nice definition and clarity. I felt delighted with this impressive image presentation.
Blu-ray Audio Quality – Despite its age, the 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio experience for the film ‘THE GREAT RACE’ appeared strong. The sound field showed an emphasis on the forward speakers, and it generally presented a nice array of elements there. Music offered pleasant stereo separation and presence, and effects cropped up in the correct locations. Those elements also seemed to blend together well, and the pieces moved cleanly across the spectrum. The surrounds didn’t add too much, but they provided some good reinforcement at times. A few of the louder sequences benefited from rear elements. For example, a plane swooped nicely from front to back, and a few other scenes followed suit. The sound field seemed ambitious and active for its age. Audio quality appeared good for a film of this vintage. Speech seemed a little thin and tinny at times, but I expected that given the film’s period. I felt dialogue consistently sounded accurate and distinct, and I heard no issues related to edginess or intelligibility. Effects were similarly clear and concise, and they lacked notable signs of distortion. They also boasted good oomph at times; for example, explosions and blasts kicked in some solid bass response. Music seemed bright and lively, and the score also showed nice depth. I heard no indications of source noise or other concerns. Overall, the audio for the film ‘THE GREAT RACE’ did extremely well.
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Blu-ray Special Features and Extras:
Special Feature Documentary: Behind-the-scenes with Blake Edwards’ ‘THE GREAT RACE’ [1965] [1080i] [2.40:1] [15:24] This vintage documentary includes some interesting behind-the-scenes footage from several major sequences in the film ‘THE GREAT RACE,’ including the massive pie fight, the barroom brawl and the initial entrance of Prince Friedrich Hapnick [Jack Lemmon]. Contributors include: Tony Curtis, Blake Edwards, Peter Falk, Felicia Farr, Russell Harlan, Martin Jurow, Christine Kaufmann, Jack Lemmon, Ross Martin, Dorothy Provine, Natalie Wood and Keenan Wynn.
Theatrical Trailer [1965] [1080p] [2.40:1] [2:51] The most interesting feature of this Original Theatrical Trailer is how it uses clips from the stars' previous films to set up a contrast with their characters in ‘THE GREAT RACE.’
Finally, Blake Edwards will probably always be best remembered for his collaborations with Peter Sellers on ‘The Pink Panther’ films, with Audrey Hepburn on ‘Breakfast at Tiffany' and with wife Dame Julie Andrews on ‘Victor Victoria.’ But ‘THE GREAT RACE’ is ripe for rediscovery by a new generation of filmmakers who can ignore the film's commercial disappointments and appreciate the sheer craftsmanship with which director Blake Edwards staged gag after gag, letting his performers do whatever they did best and surrounding them with a visual canvas that amplified their gifts. Warner Archive Collection has given the film the first-class presentation it deserves and ‘THE GREAT RACE’ is everything you could possibly hope for on the Blu-ray format and sparkling with deep, richly saturated colours, superbly rendered contrast, and a dazzling amount of fine detail evident from beginning to the end of the film. Also outstanding is Dorothy Provine’s glorious song “He Shouldn't-A, Hadn't-A, Oughtn't-A Swang on Me!” nearly knocked me off my chair. Wow, thank you Warner Archive Collection! Very Highly Recommended!
Andrew C. Miller – Your Ultimate No.1 Film Aficionado
Le Cinema Paradiso
United Kingdom
