This was very much a transitory decade as the studio system was collapsing and the new wave of American auteurs who would re-invigorate cinema would only arrive at the tail end of the decade and many of those directors would take a while to develop their style and gain the capital for their dream projects. There were a few masters at the top of their game like Stanley Kubrick and David Lean and some of the live TV generation like Sidney Lumet, Norman Jewison, and John Frankenheimer would hit the ground running.

When I look through my experiences with 60s films (that doesn’t include the early efforts of the new wave or the last remnants of those studio masters), I often think of this as the era of sophisticated comedy: If Lubitsch had a travel budget that let him shoot in Europe, fewer code restrictions and had the luxury of color, that’s the 60s. The color palate of films in this era ranging from West Side Story to Sweet Charity are rich and span the rainbow (in the case of Adam West’s “Batman” they were oversaturated but that’s the general idea). An inordinate number of films (Topkapi, Gambit, Charade, Marnie, The Thomas Crown Affair) I’ve seen involve art or jewel twists which reads as more sexy and sophisticated to movie audiences than it does gritty as far as crimes go. Even prostitution became sophisticated in the hands of Billy Wilder’s Irma la Douce which is so innocent, it’s family-friendly. This was the era where Europeans Gina Lollobrigida, Melina Mercouri, Claudia Cardinale, Sophia Loren, and Lila Kedrova became stars without having to subvert their identities to the Midwestern ideal. It was also the era of Bond which certainly would not have been popular if they went for an Atomic Blonde/Jason Bourne look.

All you need to know about how Edwards epitomized this finesse was to look at the poster to Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Audrey Hepburn (another exotic European) has a posh dress a mouth-wateringly opulent diamond necklace and a cigarette that doesn’t look like it was bought at a local pharmacy.

Blake Edwards’s films were visually polished and he was equally adept at black-and-white as he was with color. I also feel that when it comes to comedy auteurs, people point to Woody Allen and Mel Brooks but tend to leave Blake Edwards out. Is it because Peter Sellers gets more credit? At the same time, a film like Days of Wine and Roses showed a capacity for dramatic material with a Serksian flair.

Blake Edwards was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1922 and was a child of divorce. Edwards made his way to Hollywood through good old-fashioned nepotism. His stepfather was a mid-level producer at 20^th Century Fox and his stepfather only got that job because Edwards’ step-grandfather was J. Gordon Edwards , a big-time silent director who was most famous for his work with Theda Bara. Edwards’s step-family got him extra work which led to small roles and eventually writing credits in the early days of TV. He married Julie Andrews and had no natural children of his own, instead adopting two and inheriting a stepchild, so way to go on population control. He was also the inaugural visiting scholar at Arizona State’s film school.

What Most People Agree are the Essentials: Days of Wine and Roses, Victor/Victoria, Pink Panther

Number I’ve seen: About 5 1/2: I’ve seen What did You do in the War Daddy?, Pink Panther, A Shot in the Dark, Revenge of the Pink Panther, The Great Race and some of Days of Wine and Roses (it was playing on TCM and I didn’t have the DVD).

Favorite: I’m pretty much writing this entry because of The Pink Panther which I think is one of the greatest comedic films ever made. There’s no better way to punctuate the cozy obliviousness of the jet set than to make them glaringly blind to the guilt of a debonair thief (David Niven) and unaware of just how incapable the bumbling detective (Peter Sellers) is who’s trailing him. The brilliance of Inspector Clouseau is that it’s not entirely far-fetched that he could have held onto his job after all those years through bureaucratic glitches, dumb luck, and persistence.  I’ve watched this film at multiple ages and it always holds up.

Underrated: The Great Race is like a cross between Around the World in 80 Days and Wile E. Coyote vs the Road Runner. One of the most glaring things about the film is a complete lack of character exposition. Two professors (Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis) have a rivalry that extends to destructive pranks and the film opens on their prank war without telling the audience the who and why of what we’re seeing. It’s a film that revels in cartoonish immaturity but also has a playful sweetness: Natalie Wood adds quite a bit to the film as an prim and proper reporter who plans to cover this around-the-world car race (again, this isn’t a film that makes logical sense) a la Nelly Bly and she serves as a love interest for Tony Curtis. Don’t feel bad for Jack Lemmon’s character: He has Peter Falk as a companion.

Overrated: There are no films of Edwards to date that I regret watching and that I wouldn’t recommend. Trail of the Pink Panther attempted to cobble together a film from left-over footage of the Peter Sellers post-mortem (reportedly in a manner that wasn’t cleared with Peter Sellers’ estate) and it’s rightfully panned so I can’t call it overrated. I will suggest A Shot in the Dark isn’t as good as the original. The element of surprise is hard to replicate in the original and the ironic ending that Clouseau is right after all is the perfect ending to his character arc.

Blind Spots: I really should try to find a copy of Days of Wine and Roses rather than waiting for it to come back on TCM to see the second half.  I remember turning it off at some point because I didn’t want to watch a darker film about alcoholism and I regret that. I can’t really speak about his expertise with drama if I haven’t seen anything of his in that field. Victor/Victoria, in which he collaborated with wife, Julie Andrews, could be another interesting take on gender politics and perhaps cover what Tootsie (which I critiqued last week) was missing. S.O.B. was nominated for a Golden Globe but its plot—a director decides to do a topless scene with his lead actress—doesn’t seem like much to make a movie about. There’s also an 80’s movie called Blind Date and in the same way that seeing Billy Wilder try to tailor his style to later times in his final films, it might be interesting to see Edwards navigate 80s mores (I imagine his film would be significantly more showing than dancing around in a Lubitschesque way).

There was more than a little bit of self-congratulation, as well, in Hollywood’s celebration of its early days: look how far we’ve come! At the same time, the last gasps of the studio system had led to huge, inflated productions and cinematic gimmicks in increasingly desperate ploys to get viewers away from their televisions and into the theaters. In such an environment, the time was ripe for a lavish feature that applied the “bigger is better” philosophy, in Technicolor and widescreen, to such classic set pieces as the barroom brawl, the swashbuckling sword fight, and the pie fight, and Blake Edwards (director of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, but whose zany Pink Panther films are the more appropriate comparison) was the right man for the job. The Great Race was released in 1965, the same year that Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines put a British spin on some of the same ideas. (These, along with the “docutainment” feature Gizmo!, were frequent time-fillers in shop class when I was in middle school. The teacher loved the old-time machinery in these films and I guess he thought they might be educational, but to be honest I was more interested in Natalie Wood.)

As The Great Race begins, gentleman daredevil the Great Leslie (Tony Curtis) proposes to the board of the Webber Motor Company that they could prove their automobiles superior to all other makes by taking part in an international race, from New York to Paris, with him driving one of their cars. (The story is inspired by a real-life race that took place in 1908, but there’s nothing else historical about it.) Leslie’s rival, Professor Fate (Jack Lemmon), along with his assistant Max (a young Peter Falk, who later called this one of his favorite films to work on), also participates, bringing his own inventions and his repertoire of dirty tricks with him. Before the race begins, Maggie DuBois (Natalie Wood), a Nellie Bly-like reporter and “emancipated woman,” finagles her way into a position covering the race for the New York Sentinel by racing her own sponsored car (and setting off a women’s revolution at the Sentinel in the process). There are several other cars at first, but Fate’s sabotage gets them out of the way quickly, and the rest of the film focuses on Leslie, Fate, and Maggie as they face one hurdle after another in a variety of colorful locales.

The opening dedication “to Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy” says it all, really. If any more need be added, the opening credits, imitating the title cards of a silent movie (complete with booing and hissing for the villain and cheering for the hero), surely made it clear: Leslie and Professor Fate are cut from the same cloth as Dudley Do-Right and Snidely Whiplash. The Great Race is a tongue-in-cheek tribute to the entertainments of yesteryear, filtered through the madcap, irreverent lens of the ’60s. The Great Race is big in every way, with big stars giving big performances; striking European locations (as well as some very phony soundstage work); a big-name composer (longtime Edwards collaborator Henry Mancini, contributing the score and a few songs); and a hefty two-and-a-half-hour length, including an Overture and Intermission. For better or worse, this is a film built along the lines of an evening at the theater, and in its desire to entertain at all costs and at every moment, it can be either exhausting or ingratiating, or both. This is a film that is almost always “on.”

Look at the size of the crowds when the racers arrive in “Pottsdorf” (actually Vienna and Salzburg) and Paris. There was no CGI to paste extra people into the background, and they’re not mannequins, either. This is truly a cast of thousands. No expense was spared in the props (a fleet of antique cars, among other period accoutrements) or costumes (designed by Edith Head, naturally). Of course, a crowd of a thousand isn’t twice as funny as a crowd of five hundred: it’s not noticeably funnier at all, really. Most of what is funny in The Great Race comes down to what it always does: the little things, the timing and interaction between the main cast, who are funny, but who are often trapped inside the giant whirligigs that Edwards has set in motion. It’s “the curse of bigness,” to borrow Nathan Rabin’s phrase, and viewers who don’t appreciate Edwards’ brand of crashing chaos will instead find it a crashing bore. On top of that, this film cemented Edwards’ reputation as a maker of expensive films; he was a creature who blossomed in the late studio era, and the Hollywood of the ’70s and ’80s became difficult terrain for him to navigate. No wonder he increasingly returned to the popular Pink Panther series, even after the death of star Peter Sellers.

Did I say big performances? Jack Lemmon goes to eleven in The Great Race, scowling and sneering like a proper melodrama heel, berating his put-upon assistant and loudly protesting the injustices of the world, even in the (rare) moments when he comes out on top. Thanks to the Professor’s penchant for disguises, Lemmon also gets to adopt a Scottish brogue and drawl like an American cowboy, and he gets his Jerry Lewis on in a dual role as a childish, dissolute prince who happens to look exactly like the Professor. (Does that resemblance lead to comical mistaken identities and a plot to usurp the real prince’s throne and replace him with his lookalike? Funny you should ask!)

Some of the funniest scenes in the movie are in the first half hour, before the race has begun, with episodes of Professor Fate attempting to sabotage or outdo Leslie’s stunts and inevitably having his schemes backfire on him. A guided torpedo intended to sink Leslie’s speedboat instead turns on the Professor; a rocket-powered train becomes airborne and dumps the Professor in a farmer’s pigsty; a miniature bicycle-powered zeppelin fails to drop the bomb with which he hopes to destroy Leslie’s automobile. All this is accompanied by one of Mancini’s best cues, a low-down number that sounds like it should be backing up Screamin’ Jay Hawkins or Tom Waits. The set-ups and payoffs of the Professor’s flops are as predictable (and satisfying) as Wile E. Coyote’s, down to the non-fatal explosions and crashes. Decades before Joe Dante and Tim Burton would be credited with making “live-action cartoons,” Blake Edwards was doing just that. (And in case there was any doubt, look no further than Hanna-Barbera’s Wacky Races, which stole borrowed The Great Race‘s formula, almost completely intact.)

None of this is meant to slight Curtis and Wood, but Lemmon, assisted by Falk, is doing most of the comedic heavy-lifting. The rivalry between the Great Leslie and Professor Fate is one-sided, an unrequited hate affair on the Professor’s part, but the bickering between Leslie and Maggie is more of a classic will they/won’t they. The battle of the sexes is a theme that runs through much of Edwards’ work and marks the era in which it was made as much as the extended running time and over-dressed sets. Leslie is a combination of melodrama white knight and Valentino-style great lover, while Maggie, crusader for equal rights, is the woman who must work twice as hard to get half the credit, a figure as familiar in the 1960s (and today) as in the suffragette era. He is patronizing; she is pushy. Most of their scenes together that do not directly advance the racing plot are a dance between opposites, stripping away the poses and postures that keep them from listening to their hearts. (Early on, they fence with actual swords, later with words alone.)

In its own way, The Great Race is a sexy film, albeit one that turns almost everything into a joke, smirking at the restrictive standards of the past (Maggie torments the editor of the Sentinel by scandalously exposing her legs to him) while filling the screen with pretty girls (another Edwards staple), giving lip service to “frank dialogue” while dealing exclusively in innuendo (note the placement of the champagne bottle in the screenshot of Leslie above), and turning slapstick into elaborate foreplay. Tony Curtis, shirtless, later fences against a scheming baron, this time for keeps, an echo of his duel with Maggie DuBois. The banter and deliberate reversal of the situation indicate another layer of thinly-veiled eroticism: while I was watching this as an adolescent, waiting for Natalie Wood to appear onscreen, I wonder if any of my fellow students were having similar awakenings centered on Curtis?

The action comes to a head in a climactic pie fight, the scene that made the biggest impression on me as a kid. Watching it now, there are some clever jokes, like Leslie casually walking through the fight, perfectly clean in his white suit, at least until the last minute. And it was probably a blast to shoot. But despite the obvious ambition that runs through the entire film, the pie fight isn’t even as long or involved as some of the slapstick scenes that inspired it (to be fair, it is probably best to think of it as an introduction to the work of Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy, rather than as an extension of it). It’s primarily the lavish Technicolor production and Wood herself that have made this scene a favorite among slapstick fans.

Like The Great Race, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines was conceived as a 70mm roadshow with an intermission; it tops out at two and a quarter hours. Those Magnificent Men is more grounded in reality than The Great Race, but that’s not saying much: it’s still pretty fanciful, getting more mileage out of the wacky inventions that failed to get off the ground than even Gizmo! did. Written (with comedy writer Jack Davies) and directed by Ken Annakin (The Longest Day), Those Magnificent Men was originally going to be titled Flying Crazy, inspired (like many of the zany films of the era) by It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, but a commitment to realistic flying and the influence of Fox head Darryl Zanuck toned down many of the gags and pushed the element of romance to the forefront of the story. (The full title it was eventually given, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines or How I Flew From London to Paris in 25 Hours and 11 Minutes, is not only one of the longest titles in film history but is also just about the most 1960s thing ever.) It’s also possible that the generally drier wit of British comedy was simply never going to result in the sustained hysteria of Stanley Kramer’s influential film, and that’s probably for the best. Ron Goodwin provided a theme song that is easily mistaken for a WWI-era music hall anthem (and is better than the mediocre songs Henry Mancini contributed to The Great Race).

Those Magnificent Men begins with young officer Richard Mays (James Fox) landing his plane in a field, greeted by his fiancée Patricia Rawnsley (Sarah Miles), a tomboy who helps him keep his plane in repair and rides around on a motorcycle, but who has (so far) been unable to convince Richard to take her up in the air with him. After changing into the costume of an elegant young lady of the upper class to please her father, the pair meet Lord Rawnsley (portly character actor Robert Morley) and Richard convinces him that establishing an air race will help ensure Britain’s dominance of the skies. Of course this is also Patricia’s idea, a roundabout way of requesting her father’s permission to let Richard give her a ride in his airplane. Lord Rawnsley flatly refuses to allow it, but he does support the idea of the race, and the preparations begin.

The race, announced worldwide, is to be held from London to Paris, including the 22 miles over the English Channel, with a prize of 10,000 pounds. The race and its large purse attract entrants from all over Europe, as well as a Japanese flyer and an American barnstormer. Each of the main contestants is introduced in a vignette, and the international characters gently caricature their national stereotypes: the French flyer is amorous and flirtatious, with an impish sense of humor; the German officer (played by Gert “Goldfinger” Frobe) is pompous and does everything by the book (“Number one: sit down”); the Italian is emotional, singing opera while flying and surrounded by his large family while on the ground; the American is essentially a cowboy, easy-going and unconcerned by class distinctions; and so on.

The main characters are the love triangle of Richard, Patricia, and American flyer Orvil Newton (Stuart Whitman), whose primary appeal to Patricia is his offer to take her up in his own plane. However, they are for the most part the straight characters, with most of the comedy (and the faces familiar to me) on the edges: character actors like Morley, or comic Benny Hill in a small role as the captain of the airfield’s fire brigade (who are themselves modeled after Mack Sennett’s Keystone Kops). The main villain is “scoundrel of all scoundrels” Sir Percy Ware-Armitage (played by gap-toothed Terry-Thomas), an upper-class twit who plans on cheating his way to victory with the help of his beleaguered manservant Courtney (Eric Sykes). The character and his role in the story is similar to The Great Race‘s Professor Fate, down to the comeuppance he brings upon himself, but instead of being convinced of his own genius like Fate, Sir Percy’s sense of superiority is entirely class-based. Not only does he boss around and humiliate Courtney, he feels no qualms about using his “thrashing stick” on any inferior who happens to cross him (a move that earns him a punch in the nose from Orvil). Interestingly, Peter Sellers expressed interest in playing Sir Percy and the German Colonel (Frobe’s character) as a dual role, but his involvement with Blake Edwards led him away from this project.

In addition to these and other British comedians, the cast includes cameos from elder statesmen of the British theater and cinema (I can’t say I recognized them, but Annakin points them out in his director’s commentary). Finally, Red Skelton appears in a frame story as everyman, obsessed with mastering the air since the time of the cavemen and still trying in the twentieth century. In the sense of bringing together generations of performers, the influence of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is clear.

One could say that the real stars of Those Magnificent Men are the flying machines themselves: Annakin’s crew went to great pains to build replicas of actual airplanes that were flown in Britain in the early days of flight, and they are actually being flown in the movie (by stunt pilots, of course: shots of the actors in the cockpits of their planes were accomplished by a variety of techniques). Many of the incidents in the story are based on real occurrences, either recorded in history or related by veterans of those days. Annakin had an elaborate flying rig at his disposal (devised by special effects consultant Dick Parker, the rig consisted of two cranes with cables strung between that allowed controlled movement of the planes suspended from them), used to lift and crash the experimental failures (also built from authentic designs) and perform stunts that wouldn’t be possible or safe otherwise. The only flight scene done with models is at the end, as French authorities (sensibly) wouldn’t allow flight around the Eiffel Tower.

There is some of the same mid-’60s sex appeal that The Great Race has: in one running gag, the French pilot (Jean-Pierre Cassel) continually runs into a woman he thinks he knows (Zanuck “discovery” Irina Demick), but each time she is actually a different girl of a different nationality. In another recurring bit, Patricia’s skirt is twice torn off through Orvil’s clumsiness, but as in The Great Race her full-length bloomers render the scene more naughty than shocking, at least to audiences in 1965. Those Magnificent Men‘s biggest weakness is a fatal lack of chemistry between its two leads: by herself, Sarah Miles has a subdued but infectious charm, playing off the stiff upper lip of Fox or the pomposity of Morley. Stu Whitman is similarly fine in his own scenes in a performance that reminds me of James Garner (according to Annakin, the role was conceived for Dick van Dyke, which I think would have resulted in a very different and probably funnier film). But together, there are no sparks. Annakin’s commentary hints at unpleasant goings-on behind the scenes, including Whitman possibly assaulting Miles; by the end of the film they refused to speak to one another, leading to Annakin filming their close-ups separately. (The two stars had apparently papered over their differences by the time of reshoots for additional scenes a few months later, but the lack of warmth is still evident.)

Are these films worth watching today? Yes, but it depends on what you hope to get out of them: The Great Race is a lot of fun, mostly enjoyable for the chance to see its stars cut loose, but the story is silly and if you’re interested in auto racing you’ll probably be disappointed. Those Magnificent Men is worth seeing for just the opposite reason: the flight scenes and replicas of vintage aircraft are genuinely impressive, and we’re unlikely to see another film that so lovingly recreates the past with practical effects like this. Both films were sizeable successes, even considering the size of their budgets; Those Magnificent Men was successful enough to garner a follow-up, Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies (which included several cast members from Those Magnificent Men as different characters, as well as bringing in Tony Curtis). I haven’t seen it that I recall.

It’s been said that the auteur-driven Hollywood of the 1970s came to a screeching halt with 1980’s Heaven’s Gate, a disastrous flop of epic proportions. Cimino’s film had a budget that outpaced Francis Ford Coppola’s troubled Apocalypse Now, and made almost none of it back. A temperamental director who had just won the Best Picture Oscar now has problems with a failed big budget Hollywood movie suffering because of various demands place on it? This story is old hat.

It almost seemed that Blake Edwards was fantasizing about himself in that scenario when he made S.O.B., about a troubled Hollywood hotshot director who was just about to watch his movie flop. Faced with a roadblocked career, the director tries to kill himself on several occasions before having the genius idea to sex up his failed family movie and reclaim it as adult fare. Of course, since the movie stars his Academy Award-winning wife, famous for her career in family musicals, the perversion of the production now has a guilty pleasure associated with it.

If S.O.B. isn’t the smartest or most accessible of Hollywood satires, it’s certainly one of the meanest. Edwards seems to be setting out to burn bridges and tear down traditions. It almost seems like the type of movie one makes as a swan song, a final middle finger to the establishment that rejected you. And yet, Edwards had another 14 years under his belt. There’s a bit of pure bile to the proceedings ensuring S.O.B.‘s place in Hollywood’s pantheon.

S.O.B. airs on Turner Classic Movies tonight (7/11) at 2:15am,