Others say...

"Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines"
Great to see an old and funny movie. They don't make them like they used too.

"good luck"
I had the good luck to stumble onto a playing of this when I was flipping through the TV channels. It is a delightful escape from the bad news to the day, sinister plots of some shows, etc! I was delighted to find it at Amazon. It made a great Christmas present.

"They go up tiddily up up up, they go down, diddily down down..."
Set around a fictional 1910 London to Paris air race and the rivalries of the pioneer aviators it attracts from all around the world to risk life, limb and some dodgy back-projection in the Paris sequences, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, or How I Flew From London to Paris in 25 Hours and 11 Minutes began life as a project on pilots Alcock and Brown for Alexander Korda. Director Annakin had already reconstructed many of the vintage aircraft before the producer's death took the project with him.

As with The Longest Day, the story provided 20th Century Fox with a great opportunity to increase its foreign box-office prospects by populating the film with popular actors from around the world, while its episodic structure and the sheer size of the cast meant that many could film their parts in a matter of days, keeping the budget manageable. As a result, many are so brief that blink-and-you'll-miss-them (Red Skelton, Tony Hancock, Benny Hill).

If it is typical of the international co-productions that were to follow it, it is atypical in that it is also quite funny and highly entertaining. This despite studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck wanting to play down the comic aspects of the film, cutting many early scenes from the script and the rough-cut and building up the rather lukewarm romantic triangle with Stuart Whitman and James Fox fighting over Sarah Miles.

The colour in the casting is definitely on the sidelines. Gert Frobe is memorable as the pompous Prussian learning to fly "from ze book of instructions," as is the briefly seen Tony Hancock as a less than successful inventor whose real-life plaster cast on his broken foot was written into the script to provide one of the film's biggest laughs. But, despite the large ensemble, the undisputed star of the show is easily Terry Thomas at his most caddish as the archetypal cheat and rotter Sir Percy Ware Armitage, making a great double act with Eric Sykes as his put-upon chauffeur that was surely the inspiration for Dastardly and Muttley.

Ron Goodwin's catchy score and Ronald Serle's cartoons catch the mood perfectly, and the planes - built to original specifications - are quite wonderful to watch while the spoilsports among you will have fun looking out for the modern cars (such as the Land Rover clearly visible about an hour into the film) and the Sixties ferries in the Dover and Calais sequences.

Although the Movietone newsreel covering the filming is not included, the NTSC Region 1 DVD has both the full and teaser trailers are alongside an on-camera interview with Ken Annakin, whose audio commentary is carried over from the laser disc release. The remainder of the extras take the form of text and production stills, sketches and even technical specifications and blueprints for the original planes and their reconstructions.

Letterboxed throughout, even in the fullframe pretitle sequence, although the print has been taken from a 35mm interpositive, it is closer to 70mm projection ratio (it was shot in Todd-AO) than 2.35. This does not affect the picture greatly, but becomes very noticeable on the end credits, which boast players such as 'm Wanamaker.' That said, aside from a slight milkiness in a few Shots, the clarity of the print is quite superb. However, one joke is lost as the sign on Jeremy Lloyd's co-pilot, 'I am the first dog to fly', is illegible.

"Parodie over the London - Melbourne race"
Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines
Hillarous, certainly for those who love Historical Flying and those Flying Machines.

"The Best of British Humor"
Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines.
One of the great classic, British humor films of all time. Top comedians and character actors of their day give wonderful examples of the way the Brits perceive and imagine other nationalities behave. All built around the early days of flying, the pompous upper class played by Robert Morley, the free-wheeling Americans and, in particular, the British scallywag played so well by Terry Thomas ably assisted by his flunkey Eric Sykes. Not to mention the Fire Chief played by Bennie Hill in a style he is the out and out master of.

If you like to laugh, this is for you.

Just down right good entertainment for the whole family