Three 'Stylized' Performances(and maybe more)
I was watching "The Great Race" again the other day(on TCM), and something hit me(yet again, but its been awhile) that is kind of interesting about the movie.
The three very "stylized" performances given by Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, and Natalie Wood.
One realizes that Blake Edwards was going after something here: a "spoofy" feeling, the idea that he was making an old-fashioned type of "melodrama comedy" movie and that the performances could not be "realistic" in any way. Now Lemmon and Curtis and(to a lesser extent) Wood knew their way around comedy, but it looks like Blake Edwards worked with each and every one of his leads to do "something different" in their acting for The Great Race.
Tony Curtis, first, because his stylization is the most noticeable: He over-pronounciates many words, principally "automobile," which becomes "otto-MO-beel" in his funny pronounciation. But his every line is delivered with an over-articulate, True Blue Boy Scout, way-too-polite manner that just sounds funny coming through the Bronx accent of Tony Curtis.
Next, Natalie Wood. The woman had a gorgeous face(with those dark bottomeless eyes) and -- as she was most willing to show off in "The Great Race" -- a fine bosom on a petite body. Wood moves through "The Great Race" as a nearly perfected version of sex appeal; we're a long way from the poor girl of "West Side Story." And yet, Edwards here, too, seems to have directed Wood to "talk funny" -- stilted, as if giving a speech every time she opens her mouth(the character is, after all, a crusading feminist and self-righteous reporter.) Natalie Wood is the "secret weapon" of "The Great Race." Lemmon and Falk as Professor Fate and Max, are the main team; Curtis is doing his handsome spoofery -- but Natalie Wood gives us pretty much the most oddly stylized performance she ever gave, being quite pretty while she gives it. (I like her reactions, btw, in the saloon, when Dorothy Provine's dance hall star keeps sweeping Wood's face with her fluffy..whatever it is, while flirting with Curtis...Wood is jealous already and now seething.) And Natalie Wood is Movie Star Gorgeous in this. I can't think of a movie where she wore such glamourous costumes(or lack thereof, in her famous lingerie in the lake scene.)
And finally, Jack Lemmon. "The Great Race" is really his movie, with Peter Falk paired with him as Max, the henchman of Professor Fate, but always deferential to Lemmon's star power. And Lemmon is just roaringly great in this.
Lemmon's choice as Professor Fate was to yell. Loud. A lot. One hopes that Lemmon got lemon juice at the end of the day -- he could have lost his voice. But there's more to the performance than yelling. Fate is continually grumpy, continually put-upon. And -- and this is the weird thing -- Fate really doesn't talk a lot. Jack Lemmon had been a big talker in his movies, always letting us know who his character was, where he was from, what he felt. But Professor Fate usually just says a grumpy sentence or two at a time. He's almost "primal," dedicated only to his evil and his personal satisfaction. Outside conversation is of no interest to him.
Lemmon so strenuously maintains the yelling, gravelly-voiced Fate character that there are times when he either "accidentally" loses it(he talks like "Jack Lemmon" as if forgetting to do the Fate voice) or he PURPOSELY GIVES US "Jack Lemmon" just to remind us that he is there, as in this exchange with Tony Curtis on the melting ice floe.
Curtis: (We're melting into the ocean.) Please keep this to yourself.
Lemmon: Alright, but when the water reaches my upper lip...I'm GONNA TELL SOMEBODY!
Jack Lemmon delivers that line as "Jack Lemmon" -- his timing on the phrase "but when the water reaches my upper lip" is pure Lemmon. Then he brings Fate back in for the final yell.
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Of course, Lemmon gets that other funny role of the drunken, foppish, childish prince...and it is stylized too, though much closer to the "Jack Lemmon comedy persona" than his refreshingly macho and robust Fate. (After The Odd Couple, Lemmon would specialize in milquetoast loser/whiners.) I do love the "actors contrast" between Lemmon as the drunken man-child prince letting his little pug dogs lick him and Lemmon as Fate detesting the same dogs: "I hate you."
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Funny thing: Peter Falk isn't terribly stylized as Max(who is really the Fourth Star of the Film, just not billed as such.) Because Peter Falk already WAS stylized, and it just slipped easily into this movie. All these years later, the weird relationship between Fate and Max...with Max as the Brooklyn-accented "butler" living in Fate's mansion and serving his every need, taking his every punishment...has just the slightest hint of a gay relationship. A really dysfunctinal gay relationship(As Falk tells Curtis and Wood when Lemmon awakens angrily on the ice floe -- "He's always grumpy when he wakes up.")
There's also the (to me) very funny scene where the lovely but irritating Natalie invades the grounds of Fate and Max's creepy mansion home, ending with everybody blown up and the two men forcibly pushing Wood out the gate("Put up your dukes," she challenges, swinging at Fate but hitting Max.). The reading here shouldn't be "gay" -- these two guys are tough baddies who have no use for Wood's sneaky intrusions, but the effect is there: her charms mean nothing to them, she's not an attraction at all. I'm likely putting something into "The Great Race" that was never meant to be there. Still...it is now. Developments in the public world have rather forced the issue since 1965.
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Anyway, not to overanalyze "The Great Race" but it is worth noting (I think) how Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood, and Jack Lemmon all managed to throw away their usual personalities and give us what amounted to "human cartoons" in "The Great Race."
Their stylized performances set the style of the film itself. I'd say the three stars worked hard to give the movie what it needed.