Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Annotation for KRRR! 2014 by Daniela Paulová

What do the musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the Bond films have in common? Perhaps more than you think. The literary model was the novella The Magic Car by Ian Fleming, the creator of the 007 agent James Bond – and the same producer Albert R. Broccoli was behind both the Bond films and this musical. At the time of the release of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), five films with James Bond had already been released in cinemas and before the release of the next film On His Majesty's Secret Service (1969), Albert R. Broccoli had just released a family musical with an adventure plot, which became his last non-Bond film. Albert Broccoli's production intention was to make a musical that was successful with audiences, similar to that made by major American studios, such as Mary Poppins, with which Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is associated with actor Dick Van Dyke and composers the Sherman brothers. The leading female role of Truly Scrumptious was even offered to the star Julia Andrews, who ultimately turned it down precisely because of her strong resemblance to Mary Poppins. The prerequisites for success were the engagement of well-known musical stars and the acquisition of excellent composers in the form of the Sherman brothers, who had previously worked for Disney and were behind a number of hits. The musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was filmed in several different European locations, the most interesting of which is the fairy-tale castle Neuschwanstein in Germany, which appears in the Walt Disney studio's theme song and logo. The magical car, which the children of the eccentric inventor Caractacus Potts later named Chitty Chitty Bang Bang after its characteristic sound, is a former famous racing car that won one race after another in the early 20th century. However, after a bad turn and a car accident, it ended up among other junk in a landfill. Both children want to save the car from being scrapped and book a car with the promise that their father will buy it. After a chance meeting with the beautiful Miss Truly Scrumptious, they then set off in the repaired car to the fairyland of Vulgaria through their father's story. Vulgaria does not appear in Ian Fleming's original work and it clearly reflects the motives of writer Roald Dahl, who, together with director Ken Hughes, adapted Fleming's novel into a film script. If you have read Dahl's The Witches, for example, you will immediately understand that characters such as the child catcher or the baroness could not have been created by anyone else. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was shot in the Super Panavision 70 system on 65mm negative and is one of the few seventies musicals produced in Europe. It is worth noting that although the film was produced by an American producer, the musical was a British production - and in general, a European answer to the Hollywood spectacular musicals of the 1960s. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was shot directly on 70mm format and although it cost more on average than those Hollywood musicals, it unfortunately did not become a success with the audience and, like the one-year-old Dr. and His Pets, it helped end the era of big-budget musicals.