by Moe Zilla

Created on: March 14, 2008   Last Updated: March 15, 2008

"The Great Race" was a giant comedy, a big-screen spectacle nearly three hours long. Blake Edwards co-authored the screenplay, filling it with cartoony heroes and villains while telling the story of a real-life road race "around the world" in 1908. Starting in New York, the racers traveled across America, crossed the Pacific Ocean, then continued through Russia and Europe into Paris. But that's really just a framework for Edwards' broad farce about good guys and bad guys.

At the center of it all is "The Great Leslie," played by Tony Curtis, a dashing (and popular) daredevil who always wears white. Leslie's arch nemesis is the jealous "Professor Fate," played by Jack Lemmon, wearing a melodramatic black cape and a moustache. Fate conspires to sabotage the daredevil stunts with his henchman, "Max," but his nefarious plots are remarkably ineffective. One elaborate scheme involves hurtling an exploding dart onto Leslie's stunt from Fate's pedal-powered flying machine. Unfortunately, the dart becomes lodged in Fate's bicycle tire, and he suffers his own explosion instead - then pedals away in defeat.

Their rivalry will play out when Leslie enters the trans-national road race. Max (played by Peter Falk) has sabotaged all the other cars so they'll fall apart as the race begins. (Though unfortunately, he's also mistakenly sabotaged their own car.) Also entering the race is a spunky female reporter (and women's suffragette) played by Natalie Wood, who eventually joins Leslie's team when her car breaks down. In a strange way, they're all united by their shared competition - especially when the four racers discover they're all adrift at sea on the same Alaskan ice floe.

The movie is a lavish production, with colorful cars, exotic scenery, and even some castles. Henry Mancini gave the song a fun musical score, including an Oscar-nominated love song, "The Sweetheart Tree." Professor Fate's contraptions are entrepreneurial wonders, like the cannon he installed in the front of his vehicle. And the movie's finale features the largest pie fight ever filmed - which includes a giant wedding cake by a staircase which everyone topples into.

From the opening credits it's clear that he's paying homage to the charm of yesteryear with the cast being identified on silent movie title cards. (Blake Edwards even dedicated the movie to the comedy team of Laurel and Hardy.) But in a way the movie itself is a forgotten treasure from another era. In the early '60s, studios rushed to compete with television by offering oversized, wide-screen spectacles, and directors like Edwards scrambled to make it happen.

In a way, they were locked in a great race all their own.

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