Jack Lemmon has a foot-long mustache, Peter Falk as a sidekick, wears a dracula cape, and drives a car on hydraulic stilts. Every other movie needs to get on this level
Professional daredevil and white-suited hero, The Great Leslie, convinces turn-of-the-century auto makers that a race from New York to Paris (westward across America, the Bering Straight and Russia) will help to promote automobile sales. Leslie's arch-rival, the mustached and black-attired Professor Fate vows to beat Leslie to the finish line in a car of Fate's own invention.
Where to watch
4The Great Race is showing in 1 cinema in Los Angeles — next screening Saturday 18 July at 16:00 at The Frida Cinema.
Saturday, 18 July
Sunday, 19 July
Monday, 20 July
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Cast & crew
6What people say
this is a PSA to let everyone know how wholeheartedly I support evil gay couple jack lemmon and peter falk in their diabolical transformer car named hannibal (of all things) on their quest to defeat shiny bisexual tony curtis in the most cockamamie race around the world in history (with perpetual third wheel miss trilingual suffragette lady reporter natalie wood)
“The Great Race” is the most expensive-looking bimbo to ever show its face in celluloid. With a budget that ballooned the film into the costliest comedy yet made, the money to buy its moronic antics is on full display in the movie’s imagined adaption of the famed 1908 New York to Paris race. Turn of the century costumes by Edith Head, a fleet of custom vintage automobiles, a prop list of contraptions to make Wiley E. Coyote blush — director Blake Edwards seems to have gone on one of the more lunatic shopping sprees in all film history. These were purer times, after all. A movie could blow five million bucks on a pack of pugs roaming a Baroque palace, and not on anti-ageing CGI retouching Captain America’s left nipple. The result is “The Great Race,” a movie that is visually gorgeous... but spends every bit of that beauty in its commitment to a gag.The lush visuals of the movie comprise the visual vocabulary for a film completely dedicated to its language of lunacy. And with Edwards in the lead, every single crew member and actor is speaking the same nonsensical tongue. Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood, and Peter Falk are - incredulously - all flying high on the same plane of extreme camp. Name a character Professor Fate (Lemmon), and you might expect him to sneak off with the film. But The Great Leslie (Curtis) and crew are hot on his trail. All this makes “Race” perhaps the closest that live-action cinema has come to a cartoon. Not from Disney, but the Felix the Cat-era entries where every frame almost chokes its glut of gags, and watching it feels a little like seeing manic madness rendered in a burst of colorful pop art. Part of Warm Fuzzies Winter
Common questions
What is The Great Race about?+
A charismatic daredevil and a scheming villain compete in an auto race from New York to Paris, crossing multiple continents in a series of slapstick-filled misadventures.
Who directed The Great Race?+
The film was directed by Blake Edwards, a filmmaker known for his work in the screwball comedy genre and the Pink Panther series.
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