Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965) - film review

In 1910, newspaper magnate Lord Rawnsley organises an aeroplane race between London and Paris in the hope of allowing Great Britain to claim supremacy of the skies.  The competition attracts contestants from across the world but his lordship is adamant that his prospective future son-in-law, Richard Mays, will win.  Other competitors include the American cowboy Orvil Newton, a pompous Prussian officer, a wealthy Italian count, an amorous Frenchman and the upper class scoundrel Sir Percy Ware-Armitage.  Whilst his fellow airmen intend to play by the rules, Sir Percy has no qualms over employing a little skulduggery to ensure that he wins the race.  Meanwhile, as Richard focuses his efforts on winning the race, his unofficial fiancée Patricia finds herself drawn to Orvil...

Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines is easily one of the best and most fondly remembered of the epic comedies that blasted their way onto cinema screens in the 1960s.   Bigger and bolder, that was the philosophy of the large film studios of the time as they fought an increasingly desperate battle to lure spectators away from their television sets.   In the previous decades, the same studios had had it easy – blockbuster films about WWII had allowed them to make profitable films for a worldwide audience.  Now, cinemagoers wanted escapism and fun, not endless depictions of mayhem and mutilation from an era that was fast fading from the public consciousness.  The obvious alternative to a war film was a peacetime competition involving many different nationalities.  1965 saw the release of two such films, The Great Race and Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, and others were to follow. 

Director Ken Annakin had nurtured a keen interest in aviation since he had been offered a flight in a biplane by Alan Cobham.  In the mid 1950s, he was given his dream project, a film account of Alcock and Brown’s transatlantic flight.  The film was abandoned following the death of its producer Alexander Korda, but only after several period aircraft had been constructed.  Having proven himself on The Longest Day (1962), Annakin was able to persuade Twentieth Century Fox supremo Darryl F. Zanuck to bankroll a big budget film about pioneering aviators.  That film became Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, and employed some of the full-size working replicas that had been created for Korda’s film.

To ensure that the film would attract a worldwide audience, Zanuck insisted on a truly international cast, although in the end the cast was predominantly British, with all of the non-English characters portrayed as rather obvious national stereotypes.  Hence Jean-Pierre Cassel is the womanising Frenchman who falls for every pretty lady he sees (amusingly, that lady is played by the same actress throughout the film), and Gert Fröbe is the mechanical do-everything-by-the-book Prussian officer.   To compensate for the rather dull love triangle that comprises James Fox, Sarah Miles and Stuart Whitman, there is an abundance of talent from some of Britain’s great comedy legends, Terry-Thomas, Eric Sykes, Benny Hill and Tony Hancock.  The latter posed a problem when he turned up on set with a leg in plaster; some last minute scripting made a virtue of necessity and gave the film its best gag. 

Whilst it is far from perfect, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines is a wonderful nostalgia piece, particularly for anyone who first saw it in the 60s or 70s, when it was much easier to forgive its use of very dodgy back projection.  The plot is admittedly as wobbly and prone to collapse as the aircraft it features, the characters may be absurd caricatures of the worst kind, but who cares when we can marvel at the aeronautical creations that blaze and burn across the screen, reminding us how far aviation has come in such a remarkably short time?  It is good to be reminded that barely a century has gone by since the latest in aircraft design was some Heath Robinson contraption made of balsa wood and string, the kind of thing that even a Blue Peter presenter would be ashamed to show us.   

The film’s other chief delight is its opening and closing titles, with drawings by the legendary cartoonist Ronald Searle and jaunty theme composed by Ron Goodwin.  The theme song’s famous line They go up diddley up-up, they go down diddley down-down! has been attributed to Zanuck’s wife; no sane lyricist would have come up with it.  Diddley up-up aside, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines is an educative and highly enjoyable romp, a comedy classic that still remains great family entertainment. 

With all this diddley up-up, diddley down-down malarkey proving to be a hit at the box office, Ken Annakin was encouraged to make a similar race-themed period comedy, Monte Carlo or Bust (1969), a.k.a. Those Daring Young Men In Their Jaunty Jalopies.  This reworking of The Great Race repeats the winning formula of silly national stereotypes competing in bizarre contraptions a little too slavishly, but who could resist Terry-Thomas’s return visit for another bout  of dastardly moustache-twirling chicanery?

© Derek Adamson 2010

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