Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon are reunited again, this time with Blake Edwards at the wheel of this epic farce. In an homage to the great silent stars--Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton--"The Great Race" is classic slapstick and grand adventure combined.The film takes us back to the early days of automobiles, a time when there were hundreds of designers rolling out hand-crafted masterpieces fondly called 'motor cars.' The plot involves an around-the-world motor car race with Tony Curtis, representing good, always impeccably dressed in white and well-mannered. He is the gentleman adventurer and motor car enthusiast who has entered the race with a sporty white roadster. He opens doors and stops to help a lady, even if it happens to be in the middle of a race. Jack Lemmon plays the villain and Curtis' fiercest opponent, dressed of course all in black with a bumbling sidekick a la Lex Luthor in Superman. He drives what only a sinister scientist like Dr. Frankenstein could envision, a machine that is only an automobile in the loosest sense of the word. It is a child's fantasy of what should come standard with an internal combustion engine. There are more gadgets and contraptions that have nothing to do with motoring of course, but everything to do with killing the competition... literally. Curtis has Keenan Wynn as aide, assitant and butler rolled into one highly competent navigator. He is both caricature and anachronism as the misogynistic and chauvanistic eighteenth-century English man servant whose fidelity to position and service is constantly at war with his distrust of women. Right on cue Natalie Woods appears, as the sizzling suffragette supreme, perfectly adorned in full Victorian splendor and parasol to boot. Ms Woods is as stunning as ever and she does her damndest to befuddle Mr. Wynn. She plays the first female reporter for the establisment newspaper. In addition to Mr. Wynn, Ms. Woods bedevils the paper's editor by ignoring his every directive to stay out of the newspaper business and especially his office. His authority though is tenuous at best and constantly undermined by the incessant nagging from his bullying front lineman of a wife who is sympathetic to the women's movement embodied by Ms. Woods. He is well on his way to a nervous breakdown and emasculated to the point that he can no longer summon the resolve to deny Ms. Woods the choice assignment of covering the race. But, as only a true champion of women's rights could cover it, she does so undercover as a contestant, entering a motor car paid for, naturally, by the newspaper."The Great Race" is a romp as only a director and an experienced cast esembled here could pull off. It is a film that both celebrates and reinvents the art of story-telling on a big screen. Certainly it is the kind of classic film-making that has been forgotten in an era of big stars, short attention spans and revenue-maximizing studios who want the run time limited to double-digits so they can squeeze in another showing at the local cinelplex. Introduce this one to your kids, though. There is more than enough action and plenty of pratfalls to keep even the most hyperactive riveted to the screen.
Who tries to befuddle Mr. Wynn?
Natalie Woods