The Great Race
Short description
A turn-of-the-century automobile race from New York to Paris becomes a personal duel between two rivals. The Great Leslie, a polished daredevil who always dresses in white, promotes the contest to showcase the motorcar. Professor Fate, a scheming inventor in black, enters his own machine and aims to beat Leslie at any cost, assisted by his loyal henchman Max. A newspaper reporter named Maggie Dubois joins the field in search of a scoop, and the long route across two continents throws the competitors together in a series of comic misadventures.
Blake Edwards directed the film, the seventh of the 27 features listed in his directing career, following A Shot in the Dark and preceding What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? Arthur A. Ross wrote the screenplay and Martin Jurow produced. Jack Lemmon plays Fate opposite Tony Curtis as Leslie, with Natalie Wood as Maggie and Peter Falk as Max. A large credited company of 65 cast members and 78 crew members worked on the production.
Made for 12 million dollars and released in the summer of 1965, the film took about 25 million dollars worldwide, roughly doubling its budget. It holds a 7.2 rating on IMDb from 21,000 votes and a 7.1 on TMDB from 390 votes, while the critics' rating stands at 6 out of 10 from 25 reviews. Audience scores thus run a little higher than the critics' mark, and voting is heaviest on IMDb.
What's left behind the scenes
- The film is preceded by a six-minute overture. A three-minute musical interlude is placed between episodes. Both the overture and the interlude were cut in Soviet distribution. Also, two scenes were cut from the film in Soviet distribution: a long journey on an ice floe from Alaska to Kamchatka – to reduce screen time, and a visit to Tobolsk by the travelers – for ideological reasons.
- During the journey from Alaska to Kamchatka, the ice floe enters fog, and Max signals with the car horn. Unexpectedly, he plays the musical theme from the film "West Side Story" (1961) on the horn.
- Despite its comedic plot, the film was inspired by a real event – the 1908 New York to Paris Great Race.
- It ranks 55th in attendance among foreign films in Soviet cinema distribution.
- Preparing for filming, Natalie Wood took fencing and horseback riding lessons and learned to smoke cigars, but the most difficult thing for the actress was learning to drive a steam car.
- Work on the film quickly exceeded the budget allocated to the project, and as a result, the film became the most expensive comedy production of its time, as well as one of the longest, with a running time of 160 minutes.
- During the pie-throwing scene, Tony Curtis, as the Great Leslie, remained impeccably dressed, while all other characters involved in the scene were covered in pie. Curtis had to change into clean clothes several times, as pieces of pie occasionally hit him.
- For the participants themselves, the 1908 New York to Paris auto race was by no means a leisurely drive. Paved roads were scarce during that historical period, and in some parts of the world, they didn't exist at all. The most challenging parts of the competition were in Siberia and Alaska, and not all participants reached the finish line.
- The full name of Tony Curtis's character (The Great Leslie) was Leslie Gallant III.
- The cake-throwing scene takes up four minutes of screen time, but it took five days to film. It is the longest cake fight in cinematic history. Initially, the actors enjoyed filming the scene, but over time, the process became tedious and genuinely dangerous. A thrown piece of cake landed right in Natalie Wood's (who played Maggie Dubois) open mouth, and she nearly choked. Jack Lemmon, who played the main antagonist, was hit in the face with pieces of cake several times. As soon as the scene finished, director and screenwriter Blake Edwards shouted, "Cut!"—and in that same instant, pieces of cake flew at him from all directions, which the cast and crew had hidden and saved specifically for that moment.
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