Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines
or: How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 hours 11 minutes (1965)
directed by Ken AnnakinFrames in this review are taken from the Fox DVD, which shows once again that price is entirely unrelated to technical quality.
Jump to section: Technical | Summary
For a 1965 comedy filmed in 70mm, Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines is surprisingly funny. I'm not much a fan of large-format comedies — too often they get stodgy from the immensity of the undertaking. The cult favorite It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, for example, seemed very forced ("Under a ... big ... Double-Ya!"), the breathtaking vistas of a large format extravanganza are mixed with painfully obvious effects shots and closed rooms. Magnificent Men does not have these problems. Though every character is a stereotype, the acting is nevertheless quite natural and nobody feels like they have to ham it up. The film also does a good job with effects — process shots are infrequent, most of the flying was done in real life with actual reconstructions of period machines, and what process shots do exist are done with a care not often seen prior to the groundbreaking 2001: A Space Odyssey, even though they still show artifacts (see Technical section at end). Sets are spacious and decorated for maximum eye candy, and much of the film takes place outdoors.
The story revolves around a 1910 London-Paris air race sponsored by the Daily Post. Its patriotic editor Lord Rawnsley (Robert Morley) offers a prize of £10000, expecting, of course, that Britannia shall rule the air and defeat all comers. That job falls on his daughter Patricia's (Sarah Miles) suitor, an earnest young Army officer named Richard Mays (James Fox) who flies on weekends. His rival, in the race as well as in her affections, is the down-to-earth American Orvil Newton (Stuart Whitman), who is so broke that he wouldn't be able to ship his plane back home if he loses the race.
And, of course, there are participants from non-English speaking countries as well, all of whom fit British stereotypes about their nations. Italian aviation pioneer Count Emilio Ponticelli (Alberto Sordi), being the good Catholic, has half a dozen children and is large and warm-hearted. The German Manfred von Holstein (Gert Fröbe) is a pompous colonel in the army, and his French nemesis is the mischievous paramour Pierre Dubois (Jean-Pierre Cassel). The Japanese Yamamoto (Yujiro Ishihara) becomes the odds-on favorite to win when he arrives after a long journey on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. In opposition to these staunch pioneers: the dastardly British scoundrel Sir Percy Ware-Armitage (Terry-Thomas), the onscreen saboteur who can be found in nearly every race film.
The stereotypes are fairly light-hearted except for the Germans, who parade around to tiresome martial music issued entirely from Colonel von Holstein's vocal cords, complete with drums, cymbals, and brass. But their military nature gives them an advantage over the French — Dubois tries to make fun of the Germans by organizing a French flag ceremony to the tune of Frère Jacques, but his mechanics fall all over themselves and the flag falls off the staff. Just before the race begins the French finally get a copy of La Marseillaise and manage to get their flag all the way up to the top. And those spiked German pickelhaube helmets are put to good use puncturing balloons ...
The slapstick comedy isn't the highlight of the film. The German plane gets loose and chases a fire truck around a field, and a speeded-up chase sequence ensues. Patterned after the silent comedies, it is not at all inventive and gets repetitive easily. On the other hand, the mechanical comedy works better — though many planes crash in the film, they break down in more varied ways, and involve some truly outlandish contraptions, one with wings flapping like a bird.
The wry verbal humor works better. The two most important capitals of the world are, of course, London and Paris. Tossing a dozen letters into international mail bins: "You know, between these invitations and the newspapers, we should reach every flying man in the world." And the pervasive joke about the limited capabilities of the planes — Flying across the English channel? How daring, it's no less than twenty-two miles of open water! There's also the girl that Dubois keeps seeing, but she's always a different nationality each time and named after a famous actress: Brigitte, Ingrid, Marlene, Françoise, Yvette, or Betty.
The character conflicts come from the stock of tried-and-true movie moments. But the love story does better. The peculiarly reserved British courtship, mixed with Patricia's tomboyishness and mechanical aptitude, is the best part of the film. Richard and Patricia are clearly going to end up married, but Richard is reluctant to take her up flying due to her father's opposition. There's a marvelous contrast between the impish Patricia, wide smile and pleading eyes, and Richard, carrying a strained composure and finding excuses not to take her up (Oh, and by the way, please don't kiss me, I'm on duty). But he clearly fancies her, lets her help him with the plane, doesn't tell her father about her motorcycle riding ("Exciting, isn't it?"), and offers to let her drive the car. As the suave young Englishman with a public school accent, James Fox is first-class.
Patricia is bright and free in the opening shot riding a motorcycle, and Sarah Miles acts the part with such charm and energy that one wishes her other 70mm production Ryan's Daughter were available in as good a DVD as this one. Confined to a Victorian dress for the rest of the film, Miles is more restrained, not just physically but also in her acting. Disappointing — there should've been more of her sneaking about with Richard behind her father's back. She finally gets around her father's wishes by flying with Orvil, used to barnstorming around with women in the American West, but Patricia's relationship with Orvil seemed rather forced, and not just because of the Texas accent and cowboy manner.
Director Ken Annakin explains on the DVD commentary that Stuart Whitman fell for Sarah Miles in the course of filming, pursuing her off the set as well as on. Subsequently, it became difficult to get Miles to do tender love scenes together with Whitman. The redeeming feature of the American fling is the jealousy it inspires in Richard, rather fun to watch, and it underscores how easygoing the pair are.
And of course British comedies love to make fun of the class structure. Lord Rawnsley has a prospective father-in-law's chat with Richard — his approval may be taken for granted, after all, he went to school with Richard's father. But Richard is a busy young army officer, what with all the plane-flying and dinners and socials and card-playing with fellow army officers — there just aren't enough days of the week for marriage. Later on, Richard has engine trouble during the race and swoops over an aged couple for a landing on an open parkway. The old man refers to his wife as "the memsahib" and hasn't heard of the Daily Post air race — he reads The Times.
Technical
The restoration is, in a word, magnificent. And the most magnificent thing about it is that it wasn't done digitally, with Fox striking fresh 70mm prints of the restoration in late 2003. This of course provides marvelous source material for the DVD, though perfectionists will complain about the edge enhancement and compression artifacts. There's been no digital cleaning done, and the film still looks clean as a whistle — just try to find any hint of dust outside of the process shots. They're there (no digital cleaning, after all), but it's impossible to see them without looking for them. Probably transferred directly off 65mm preservation materials, too, which of course makes any dust that does exist even less visible.
And wow, does that 1965 color negative film look great after all those years. Colors in the daytime are especially vibrant, with the multihued costumes popping out in all their splendor. Colors at night still suffer a bit from the decades-old stock, a bit of magenta shift in the shadows, but nothing obtrusive. Think: the basement map room in Lawrence of Arabia. You're too busy looking around the room. The vibrant colors draw attention to artifacts from the era: a Mercator world map dotted by colors for the colonial powers, the old red-white-and-black flag of the German Empire, the now-gone coat-of-arms on the Italian tricolor, the 46-star United States flag. And wow, is that red coated British uniform really red.
The interesting thing about the process shots is how well they were done considering the era. Rear-projection is preferred to bluescreen, and what little bluescreen there is uses holdout mattes whenever possible to hide the matte lines in bright backgrounds like the sky. Several of the process shots almost pass for something from the ILM model era — a shot from the Eiffel Tower as the airplanes fly by is utterly convincing. Other model shots show some instability, the dust problem hadn't yet been controlled, and they didn't yet have gamma-1 duplicating stocks to avoid contrast buildup in opticals. But the telltale grain buildup of other early effects is entirely absent on DVD, since all the process shots were also done in 70mm — just like ILM and EEG would later shoto VistaVision or 70mm to be reduced into 35mm anamorphic. Of course, in 70mm it'd probably be obvious when compared to first-generation live-action 70mm, but any 35mm reduction prints would be similarly impressive like the DVD.
And the sound is similarly wonderful, the 5.1 remix is extremely clear, noiseless, and subtle — listen for that faint music track playing behind the quieter scenes. The remix does mean modern hard-center dialog, but since we're used to it, the lack of ping-ponging allows us to focus our attention on the sumptuous visuals. The sound effects are best in the roar of aircraft engines, and annoying in the few cases when they are used for slapstick effects — just completely different in tone from the rest of the film. Apart from the diegetic music of Frère Jacques, Ron Goodwin's score borrows heavily from recognizable pieces like the German anthem and Rule Britannia, though the title song is fairly catchy and sticks with you a while after viewing.
Summary
Looks and sounds spectacular when projected on a LARGE screen with good speaker spread. And for all its shortcomings as a comedy which doesn't quite make the most of a promising premise, it does the 70mm Todd-AO spectacle bit very well. A medium close-up is about as close as it gets, and there's so much to look at in the background. Your eyes wander around on those wide-open shots, picking out spectators, trying to read signs in the distance; too bad DVD lacks the resolution to make them legible. With the compositions and breathtaking aerial visuals, it's really an experience. And of course, that 20th Century Fox Fanfare is ideally suited for proscenium openings like the one on Magnificent Men.
Oh, and the editing is seamless. Didn't realize that Anne Coates was one of the editors until I saw her name in the credits. It works so well on a subconscious level that it's unnoticeable, enhancing the plot and the scenery and engrossing the viewer.
taoyue@alum.mit.edu
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This page last updated 11 February 2007.