Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		5.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.5

The Great Race Blu-ray Movie Review

On Your Marks, Get Set, Pratfall!

Reviewed by Michael Reuben September 6, 2014

The notion of an epic comedy is almost a contradiction in terms. According to the usual formula, comedy works best when it hits hard and fast, then exits while the audience is still laughing. It takes a rare accumulation of talent, and a firm guiding hand, to prolong the experience for hours on end, parceling out recurring jokes at just the right pace and modulating highs and lows so that viewers can catch their breath. Producer and director Stanley Kramer pulled off perhaps the greatest epic comedy of all time in 1963 with It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, which, at over three hours, played to great acclaim but cost so much to make that its studio, United Artists, didn't immediately see much profit.

Two years later, director Blake Edwards, his credentials burnished by such hits as The Pink Panther and A Shot in the Dark, persuaded Mirisch Productions and, eventually, Warner Brothers to spend a then-unheard-of $12 million on his personal tribute to slapstick and silent comedy, The Great Race. With a shaggy dog story devised by Edwards and screenwriter Arthur Ross (father of writer/director Gary Ross) and a fine collection of talent (though nothing on the scale of Mad, Mad World), The Great Race clocked in at two hours and forty minutes—and the reception was terrible. Reviews were unfavorable, and box office was nowhere near the performance of Kramer's film, which had cost $3 million less.

Maybe it was the timing. With Mad, Mad World still fresh in the memory of audiences, a star-studded comedy extravaganza had lost its novelty appeal, especially since the critics didn't like this one (a factor that meant much more in those days). This was the era when film studios were still struggling to give viewers a reason to abandon the comfort of their living room TVs for the excitement of the big screen experience. A film that harkened back to the days of silent comedy probably wasn't the right sort of enticement, even if it did feature glamorous stars engaged in one of the most elaborate and colorful pie fights ever staged.

Edwards and Ross set The Great Race in 1908, because there actually was a cross-continental car race that year, but any similarity between history and the film ends at that point. The device that drives the film is a bitter rivalry between two implacable foes, The Great Leslie (Tony Curtis) and Professor Fate (Jack Lemmon). Daredevils and showmen, each tries to outdo the other in feats of thrilling bravery, with Leslie's stunts resembling those of Houdini, while Fate is more like a precursor to Evel Knievel. There's no doubt, though, about who is the good guy. Leslie is attired in white from head to toe, including, of course, his hat. It's a running joke that his impeccable whites remain unsoiled, even during the film's climactic pie fight (well, almost). Professor Fate is always dressed in black, and Lemmon twists his face and body into ever-more outrageous postures of villainy as he chortles, curses his rival and schemes to outwit him. He's as animated as Wile E. Coyote pursuing the Roadrunner, and he loses every time.

Each opponent has a sidekick. The Great Leslie has an expert mechanic with the appropriate last name of Sturdy and the first name of Hezekiah (Keenan Wynn). Dignified and professional, Hezekiah is loyal to his boss, but he has his pride, and their relationship will be sorely tested during the course of the title race (by a woman, of course). Professor Fate has his own factotum with the equally appropriate name of Max Meen (the great Peter Falk, who had a gift for playing memorable sidekicks before he transformed into Lt. Columbo). With fido-like fidelity, Max absorbs a constant stream of abuse from the Professor but always comes when called. "Push the button, Max!" is an oft-repeated line, usually followed by disastrous results.

It is Leslie's idea to prove the superiority of American automotive engineering by staging and winning a race from New York to Paris, via Alaska, the Bering Straits and across Russia and Europe. Leslie will drive a custom-engineered car, The Leslie Special, built by the Webber Motor Car Co., and the race is open to all who wish to enter. This brings in a new antagonist, an ambitious woman named Maggie DuBois (Natalie Wood), who aspires to be the first female reporter for The New York Sentinel, even though the paper's editor-in-chief, Henry Goodbody (Arthur O'Connell), is steadfastly opposed to hiring women. But Miss DuBois is such a force of nature that, before he knows what hit him, Mr. Goodbody is sponsoring her as a competitor in the race, driving a Stanley Steamer and sending back first-hand reports via carrier pigeons (which inspire a whole series of visual jokes). Natalie Wood has said that she did not enjoy the experience of making The Great Race, but you would never know it from the radiant presence and boundless energy she brings to the role of Maggie, not to mention the ease with which she fills out the endlessly changing wardrobe that magically appears from the single valise accompanying Maggie as she crosses three continents.



Maggie's example spurs a suffragette movement in New York that builds relentlessly while the race proceeds. The leader is Henry Goodbody's wife, Hester (I Love Lucy's Vivian Vance), who, in short order, is staging protests outside her husband's office. These scenes are The Great Race's comic relief from the other comedy out on the racing course. Naturally, Professor Fate must enter, driving a car of his own design, the Hannibal 8, which he has outfitted with several nefarious gadgets, some of which even work ("Push the button, Max!"). The Professor also assigns Max to sabotage as many of the other contestants as possible so that, soon enough, it's just Fate, Leslie and Maggie DuBois.

In the Western town of Boracho (which is Spanish for "drunk"), the contestants are fêted by the town with a grand saloon show featuring showgirl Lily Olay (Dorothy Provine). Unfortunately, Lily's jealous boyfriend, the fearsome Texas Jack (Larry Storch), resents the attention she's paying to The Great Leslie, and the result is the bar fight to end all bar fights, with our heroes narrowly escaping Boracho while chaos reigns behind them. In Alaska, they freeze, nearly drown on an ice flow and have a close encounter with a polar bear. In Russia, they discover that Maggie DuBois speaks the native tongue (which Natalie Wood really did, having been born Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko).

And then in the film's third act, The Great Race changes gears, as the contestants reach the fictional European city of Pottsdorf, capital of Carpinia, where director Edwards stages his own variation on The Prisoner of Zenda and Jack Lemmon gets to play a second role even more outlandish than Professor Fate. Discovering that Fate bears an uncanny resemblance to the Crown Prince Frederick Hoepnick, a drunken goofball who is about to be crowned king, conspirators led by Baron Von Stuppe (Ross Martin) and General Kuhster (George Macready) scheme to replace the prince with Fate, who will then abdicate in favor of the Baron. Threats of death and torture are involved, and Maggie manages to spend most her time in Pottsdorf wearing only underwear. Between The Great Leslie's swordplay and Max Mean's stealth, the conspirators are foiled but not before the famous pie fight, which took five days to film and consumed 4000 pies.

After Pottsdorf, the final leg to Paris doesn't take long. To find out who wins, you'll have to see the film.

Everyone in The Great Race is in top form, including Blake Edwards, whose eye for the setup of a slapstick gag was second to none, but for Jack Lemmon the film is a memorable high point in a career filled with great comic performances. The manic energy he brings to both of his characters is so infectious that he dominates the frame whenever he appears. As Prince Hoepnick, he creates such a distinctive portrait of a spoiled man-child that, even though you've been watching him as Professor Fate for two hours, he immediately seems like a different person (and a hilarious one at that). Lemmon's son, Chris, has said that he considers The Great Race his father's finest screen work (and remember, this was the original Felix Unger in The Odd Couple). See for yourself.

The Great Race Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Great Race was shot by Russell Harlan (Hatari! and To Kill a Mockingbird), who achieved such beautiful clarity and detail, even in the effects shots created through optical superimposition, that the film has sometimes been mistaken for large format Super Panavision 70. In fact, 70mm prints were released, but they were blowups from the 35mm negative. The Warner Archive Collection has done its usual commendable job in transferring and mastering the film for this 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray release, which preserves the film's historic appearance while giving it all the color, depth and detail of which the Blu-ray format is capable. Fine detail is exceptional, whether in the lines of Professor Fate's ever-changing sneer, or in wide panoramas of crowds and landscapes, or in Natalie Wood's elaborate outfits, which must have cost far more than an aspiring career woman of that age could possibly afford. The blacks are solidly rendered (essential for a film with a classic villain), and the full spectrum is used to maintain visual interest, from the heavily saturated colors that appear in the painted credits to the delicate pastels and earth tones in the various landscapes, to the bright whites of the arctic adventure.

A fine but visible grain pattern appears throughout the image, with no apparent signs of filtering or other digital interference. Since Edwards keeps people moving at all times, the screen captures don't do justice to the degree of detail rendered by the tiny shifting of grain particles from frame to frame in what appears to be a first-rate data scan. As per its usual practice, WAC has mastered The Great Race with a generous average bitrate, in this case 29.995 Mbps, which is essential for the many complicated physical gags that Edwards devised and then, in most cases, enacted for real. (The pies were so real that they spoiled, and the set had to be hosed down and re-dressed with fresh pie filling.) The Great Race is a winner.

The Great Race Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Great Race was released in stereo for 35mm prints, with a six-track mix for 70mm exhibition. I do not know what source was used for the 5.1 mix encoded on Blu-ray in lossless DTS-HD MA, but the result makes for enjoyable listening. Since Edwards was making a tribute to silent comedy, none of the effects are overly loud. They're comical, like a cartoon (and also like a cartoon, no one gets hurt, even when they're blown up). Still, the effects have enough punch, and the track has sufficient dynamic range, that the explosions make an impact, the car engines sound distinctive, and Professor Fate's various devices are all memorable. When the huge bar brawl begins in the town of Boracho, the blows and breaking bottles can be heard from left and right. In general, the stereo separation is much stronger than the rear channel activity.

One oddity of the soundtrack is that the dialogue seems to be mixed at a much lower volume than the effects and music (another great score by Edwards' usual partner-in-crime, Henry Mancini). Once you adjust the volume, the dialogue is perfectly intelligible, but you may find that The Great Race needs to be watched at a higher setting than you usually use for Blu-ray viewing.

The Great Race Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The extras have been ported over from Warner's 2002 DVD release of The Great Race.

• Behind the Scenes with Blake Edwards' The Great Race (1080p; 1.33:1; 15:25): This vintage EPK includes some interesting behind-the-scenes footage from several major sequences, including the pie fight, the barroom brawl and the initial entrance of Prince Hoepnick. Though formatted as 1080p, the source appears to be standard definition.



• Trailer (1080p; 2.40:1; 2:51): The most interesting feature of the trailer is how it uses clips from the stars' previous films to set up a contrast with their characters in The Great Race.

The Great Race Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

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's and with wife 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 Edwards staged gag after gag, letting his performers do whatever they did best and surrounding them with a visual canvas that amplified their gifts. WAC has given the film the first-class presentation it deserves. Highly recommended.