Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968)

This was by no means Daniel’s favorite film, and boy, is it ever long, but I think it’s a terrific and silly fantasy. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is based on the children’s novel by Ian Fleming, and, since Albert Broccoli and his company were making the Bond films from Fleming’s books, it seemed like a good investment. Also since, in 1967, they had Roald Dahl on their Rolodex – he had written the screenplay for You Only Live Twice – they had somebody to phone who had lots of experience in writing good children’s fiction to turn Fleming’s novel into a good script.

Dick Van Dyke had been in the habit of making films in between seasons of his sitcom The Dick Van Dyke Show in the early sixties. Of these, of course, Mary Poppins is the best-known. He was hugely in demand after the series ended and regularly in front of cameras. I suspect that Chitty Chitty Bang Bang had a very long shoot. It filmed across three countries and required the use of those gigantic stages on Pinewood that the 007 people were typically using for bases inside volcanoes, and was released in time for Christmas 1968.

Cast opposite Van Dyke was Sally Ann Howes, who was principally a stage actress, with dozens of hugely successful roles on Broadway and the West End over her career. Also in the cast, a few names familiar from the 1960s Bond films, including Gert Frobe and Desmond Llewellyn, and, just to show there were no hard feelings for Columbia not returning the rights to Casino Royale and making that very silly spoof film instead, Broccoli hired one of Casino‘s five credited directors, Ken Hughes, to shoot this.

Like Casino, this is a movie that really could use some scissors taken to it. It’s in two sections with an intermission, about 84 and 60 minutes each. Those first 84 could have been trimmed by a good fifteen minutes, if not more. Our son has really started to rebel against songs in movies, and there are some really long numbers in the first section. He got restless and fidgety and, on a couple of occasions, got up to lie down behind the sofa just to put an end to all this nonsense and wait for this car to fly like I told him would happen.

Then he met the Child Catcher and it wasn’t boredom that sent him behind the sofa. See, if you’ve never seen this movie, its central conflict is a long fantasy story that Dick Van Dyke’s eccentric inventor, Caractacus Potts, tells, in which he and his children and his new friend (and, possibly, fiancée) are beset by agents from the country of Vulgaria who want his magical car. They have to fly to Vulgaria after Potts’ father, played by Lionel Jeffries, is accidentally abducted by the baron’s agents.

In Vulgaria, children are forbidden because the baroness, played by Anna Quayle, is afraid of them. She has employed this really freaky dude to capture them. The Child Catcher is played with bizarre energy by the late Robert Helpmann, a celebrated Australian dancer, director of that country’s national ballet theater, with a list of honors and awards as long as your arm, and he’s best known for less than fifteen minutes onscreen luring children into cages with lollipops. He is absolutely horrifying to little ones. There were so many tears welled up in my son’s eyes that I teared up a little just looking at how shaken he was!

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is flawed, but it’s aged extremely well and we were mostly entertained by it, even if our son’s restlessness during the longer sections got pretty exasperating. We probably should have taken more advantage of the movie’s intermission, but four is a little young for this one and we would have done better to wait another year or so. For adults, you’ve got the sumptuous production and giant sets and wonderful chemistry between the leads, and if their romance seems just a little too inevitable, well, you need to have your heart polished up a little bit.

Now, about getting the darn theme tune out of my head…