| Cinema Club | Bookstore | Guidebook | Our partners |
Cinema
English Cinema Club. British comedy - “Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines” (1965)
20 May 2010
The film opens with a brief, comic segment on the history of flight, narrated by James Robertson Justice and featuring American comedian Red Skelton depicting a recurring character whose adventures span the centuries, in a series of silent blackout vignettes that incorporate stock footage of unsuccessful attempts at early aircraft. This was Skelton's final feature film appearance; he was in Europe filming for the 1964-1965 season of his television series, The Red Skelton Show.
This is followed by a whimsical animated opening credit sequence drawn by caricaturist Ronald Searle, accompanied by the title song. A recurring "gag" suggested by Zanuck concerned his girlfriend, Irina Demick who played Brigitte (French), Marlene (German), Ingrid (Swedish), Françoise (Belgian), Yvette (Bulgarian) and Betty (British) as a lookalike flirt pursued by pilot Pierre Dubois, played by Jean-Pierre Cassel. The American lead, Stuart Whitman was selected over Dick Van Dyke, whose agents never contacted him about the offer, but most of the cast were British.
Sarah Miles plays the daughter of Lord Rawnsley (Robert Morley), a newspaper magnate whose favourite to win is his daughter's fiancé, Richard Mays (James Fox), flying an Antoinette monoplane. Rawnsley sums up: "The trouble with these international affairs is they attract foreigners." An international cast plays the array of contestants, most of whom live up to national stereotypes, including the by-the-book, monocle-wearing Prussian officer (Gert Fröbe) flying an Eardley-Billing biplane, impetuous Count Emilio Ponticelli (Alberto Sordi), an amorous Frenchman (Cassel) in a Santos-Dumont Demoiselle, the rugged American cowboy Orvil Newton (Stuart Whitman) flying a Bristol Boxkite (impersonating a Curtiss), who falls for Rawnsley's daughter Patricia, who was also Richard Mays' girlfriend, causing a love triangle.
Directed by Ken Annakin
Starring Stuart Whitman, Sarah Miles, Terry-Thomas, Robert Morley, James Fox
Running time 138 minutes
United Kingdom, 1965
Start at 19:00.
Admission 20 hrivnas.