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

★ 6.8 2h 18m IMDb
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In order to boost circulation of his newspaper, Lord Rawnsley announces an air race and offers £10,000 to the first person who can fly across the English Channel. But one of the participants, Percy, plots to sabotage his competitor's planes. Will Percy triumph?

Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 Hours 11 Minutes

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Cast

Stuart Whitman
Stuart Whitman as Orvil Newton Died 2020 · San Francisco, California, USA Stuart Maxwell Whitman (February 1, 1928 – March 16, 2020) was an American actor. He was best-known for playing Marshal Jim Crown in the western television series Cimarron Strip in 1967. Whitman also...
Sarah Miles
Sarah Miles as Patricia Rawnsley Age 84 · Ingatestone, Essex, England, UK Sarah Miles (born 31 December 1941) is an English theatre and film actress. Description above from the Wikipedia article Sarah Miles, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia..
James Fox
James Fox as Richard Mays Age 86 · London, England, UK William Fox (born 19 May 1939), known professionally as James Fox, is an English actor. He appeared in several notable films of the 1960s and early 1970s, including King Rat, The Servant, Thoroughly M...
Alberto Sordi
Alberto Sordi as Count Emilio Ponticelli Died 2003 · Rome, Lazio, Italy Alberto Sordi (15 June 1920 – 25 February 2003) was an Italian actor. He was also a film director and the dubbing voice of Oliver Hardy in the Italian version of the Laurel & Hardy films..
Robert Morley
Robert Morley as Lord Rawnsley Died 1992 · Semley, England, UK From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Robert Adolph Wilton Morley CBE (26 May 1908 – 3 June 1992) was an English actor who, often in supporting roles, was usually cast as a pompous English gentleman...
Gert Fröbe
Gert Fröbe as Colonel Manfred von Holstein Died 1988 · Zwickau, Germany Karl Gerhart Fröbe, better known as Gert Fröbe (25 February 1913 – 5 September 1988) was a German actor who starred in many films, including the James Bond film Goldfinger as Auric Goldfinger, The Thr...

Audience Reviews

RaeElaine Mar 07, 2015
So STRANGE that I get to write a first review of this movie. This movie, short handed to TMMTFM, is so much fun to watch, and on a DVD (or Blue Ray), you can pause it while you fetch your O2 bottle so that you do not turn blue.

I will leave it up to proper aeroplanists as to whether or not this is good flying instruction. However, as a former unit Safety Officer, spotting safety hazards can be a real sport. I think I counted six at my last use/view.

Researching material on the internet can be a real diversion. Although TMMTFM is about airplanes, automotive buffs can get a fix on some splendid specimens, that were before my time.
CinemaSerf 7/10 Apr 02, 2026
I remember this was always on STV when I was a child, and so with all the adverts it ran to over three hours and so I’m not sure I’ve ever got to the end of it until now. Now that I have, I found it quite an enjoyable romp in the style of David’s Niven’s “Around the World…” from 1956. “Lord Rawnsley” (Robert Morley) is worried that British preeminence in the aviation race might, well, not actually exist. With French, German, Italian, Japanese and yes, even the old colonials across the pond taking the lead, he determines that something has to be done. A prize of £10,000 ($50,000) is to be offered to someone who can fly from London to Paris. Nowadays that takes about as long as it takes to neck a glass of wine, but here we are talking about it probably taking fifty times that amount of time as the great and the good of international aeronautics gather together. Aside from now showing us a splendid array of contraptions that looked no more aerodynamic than Windsor Castle, it also introduces us to the romantic shenanigans that are going to underpin much of the rivalry. You see, “Patricia” (Sarah Miles) is the daughter of their sponsoring peer and she is unofficially affianced to the dapper but pretty hapless “Mays” (James Fox) - assuming, that is, that he can find a spare evening between his card games, his snooker and his flying. His goose might be about to be cooked, though, as the arrival of the charming American “Orvil” (Stuart Whitman) risks sweeping the perfectly savvy girl off her feet. With each of them constantly threatening to thrash the other, that leaves room for the Machiavellian schemer “Sir Percy” (Terry-Thomas) to wander the aerodrome sabotaging at will so that his is the only plane that might win. With temperatures rising and tempers flaring, it’s time for the actual race - who’s going to get the cheque? This features an all star cast that looks like it is enjoying itself as the slapstick and the engineering take off quite entertainingly. A slew of familiar faces each have their moment in the sun, or in the air, and it doesn’t miss out on stoking some international incidents and poking fun at some stereotypes along the way. There is some aerial photography that isn’t so terribly convincing sixty years later but with Terry-Thomas at his most dastardly and Gert Frobe knowing just how to deflate his own balloon, there’s plenty here to raise a smile.

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