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The Great Race (br: A corrida do século) é um filme estadunidense de 1965, uma superprodução dirigida por Blake Edwards e explicitamente uma homenagem à dupla O Gordo e o Magro, formada por Oliver Hardy e Stan Laurel. É um filme divertidíssimo onde o centro da trama é uma grande corrida de automóveis disputada no início do século entre Nova Iorque e Paris.
A trilha sonora do filme é do habitual colaborador de Blake Edwards, Henry Mancini. A música The Sweetheart Tree, com letra de Johnny Mercer, foi indicada ao Oscar, mas perdeu para The Shadow of Your Smile, do filme The Sandpiper.
A homenagem à dupla O Gordo e o Magro fica mais evidente no relacionamento entre o Professor Fate e seu auxiliar Max, vivido pelo ator Peter Falk, e na batalha de tortas de Pottsdorf.
Director Blake Edwards based the film on the 1908 New York to Paris Race, very loosely interpreted. On February 12, 1908, the "Greatest Auto Race" began with six entrants, starting in New York City and racing westward across three continents. The destination was Paris, making it the first around-the-world automobile race. Only the approximate race route and the general time period were borrowed by Edwards in his effort to make "the funniest comedy ever".
Edwards, a studious admirer of silent film, dedicated the film to early film comedians Laurel and Hardy The Great Race incorporated a great many silent era visual gags, along with slapstick, double entendres, parodies, and absurdities. ] The film includes such time-worn scenes as a barroom brawl, the tent of the desert sheik, a sword fight, and the laboratory of the mad scientist. The unintended consequences of Professor Fate's order, "Push the button, Max!", is a running gag, along with the spotless invulnerability of "The Great Leslie".
Edwards poked fun at later films and literature as well. The saloon brawl scene was a parody of the western film genre, and a plot detour launched during the final third of the film was a direct parody of The Prisoner of Zenda, wherein a traveler is a lookalike for the king and stands in for him
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