Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 hours 11 minutes (1965)

(On TV, May 2020) We’re unlikely to ever see another epic comedy quite like Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines and that’s too bad: Comedies are now low-to-medium-budget propositions (when Hollywood bothers doing a comedy in the first place) and so we’ll never see the mixture of lavish practical gags, stunts, widescreen cinematography and expansive scope that characterizes this film. The premise is simple—an international race from London to Paris at the dawn of the aviation age—but the execution is absolutely maximalist, with rickety contraptions somehow making it into the air and spectacularly colliding with other things, either airborne or on the ground. (Chances are good that you’ve seen bits and pieces of the film’s opening montage in other contexts, as it presents the goofy machines that people tried at the heroic age of aviation.) The running time nearly reaches two hours and a half and the international cast is large (and stereotypical; your mileage will vary as with the film’s sexism. ). It still looks visually gorgeous today by virtue of having been shot in 65 mm, even though not much of this was obvious on the standard-definition channel I was watching. It’s not without equals: Its sequel Monte Carlo or Bust! in 1969 or The Great Race, also made in 1965, touches upon similar epic comedy material, but neither have the grandiose nature of seeing comedy flying in the air. The stunts are obviously the point of it all. Generally absorbing despite a few lulls and all in good fun, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines is quite unlike any film made lately, and it will make you wish for a revival of epic comedies.