I vividly remember the first movie I saw in theaters, which was probably “A Shot in the Dark,” and my parents took me to watch it at our local drive-in theater. This memory stands out to me because the town I lived in never had a cinema for longer than three years.
What stays with me for certain are all the times my father cackled at the odd noise made by the French paddy wagon every time it arrested the film’s bumbling hero, Inspector Jacques Clouseau of the Paris Sûreté. That moment had quite a positive impact on me.
The movie gave rise to my obsession with Peter Sellers, and not the bombshell starlet Elke Sommer. The obsession I had with Seller movies eventually made me a complete fanatic of British comedy, from the most noteworthy Goon to Monty Python, Douglas Adams, Rowan Atkinson, Ben Curtis, and many more.
This was the first movie ever created about the character by Blake Edwards, who in tandem with the future Exorcist author William Peter Blatty turned Harry Kurnitz’s play into a screenplay to be performed by Sellers.
In 1963, Edwards released his version of “The Pink Panther” and in the process butchered “Sellers’ and His Blundering Bunder’s” roles. As first things go, it was filmed second. One cannot argue that this is how the so-called franchise was created. This version bucks the norm and was replicated in a far too controversial manner than any sane person would dare to do this task.
It is said that memories serve your mind like an editor cuts the movie. And for that, he did a shamelessly brilliant task. But let us not drift away from the premise here. If anyone adores the work identified with Sellers and the plethora of comedies, be them darker or light in contrast, then his “Doctor Strange Love-The Magic Christian-The Millionairess-Lolita” of the 60s is a must-watch, albeit pinnacle moments of comedy do not age as beautifully as other genres tend to.
It’s a rather perplexing scene to remember, but the framing looks brilliant. The best highlight must be the “Agatha Christie-ish” murderers sequence. Add an evening packed with a night clubbing attempt of an assassination or two, the nudity colony, and you’ve got the perfect recipe for a climax.
Sellers’ genius gifted him an innovation he needed to produce something unique from set pieces in front of him. This was well explained in the Cable TV film “The Life and Death of Peter Sellers,” starring Geoffrey Rush, and later in Edwards’ vision “Blake, Edwa”.
In his office, Clouseau has a globe that serves as a finger trap and a pool cue rack that’s his worthy adversary a blown line he gives is worth repeating that is, if Sellers was able to keep himself from laughing during the take.
He was a renowned nightmare to collaborate with. Many filmmakers and collaborators would say he was, “only good for one take”, and this was true for everyone starting from Kubrik and above. Edwards worked with him on multiple occasions, so he must have thought otherwise, which is how “Pink Panther” and “The Party.” Blake Edwards understood the humor.
The overused jokes from the rest of the series are used here for the first time the trench coat, sidekick cum martial arts instructor Kato (Burt Kwouk who is both sidesplitting as well as a great sport), long-suffering sidekick Hercules, the eye twitches, and the incredulous Lord of comic characters are all turned by Herbert Lom into his very own masterpiece.
“Ten more like Clouseau and I could conquer the world,” is a notion that sits comfortably in the realm of theatrical imagination. Its outlandishness only reaffirms that there exists no way one could have extracted inspiration from the “Knives Out” Rian Johnson series. Take for example the murder mystery farce “Clue.”
The story follows a gradually unfolding mystery where the “guilty” tome Maria Gambrelli (Sommer) fittingly gets the spot of a prime suspect, given that she tends to be found at the crime scene holding the weapon. Staff stationed at the mansion near the city have started losing their lives gradually, and as such, she is the primary suspect.
Maria is not someone Clouseau is ready to accept any time soon. The love-struck man will keep coming up with reasons that permit him to allow Maria to go so that Clouseau or his aide Hercule Gardner (Graham Stark) can pursue Maria and discern whom she is concealing herself for.
“Make note of everything,” Hercule’s aide Gardner tells him. “It doesn’t really matter. The only things that matter are facts. If we do not have them the whole process becomes guesswork.”
Yes, in this instance, it indeed is “I do as I say, not as I do.” The facts enforcing the notion of Clouseau and Maria being at odds only seem to be piling up, as Clouseau remains obsessed with Mary and her reasonably voluptuous garments.
We start fearing Maria’s employer, Monsieur Ballon (the laughable George Sanders) along with the rest.
Clouseau’s supervisor, Chief Inspector Dreyfus (Lom), is distinctly irritated. Yet, since the wealthy and influential Ballon wishes to be examined by the “fool,” there is no option but to transform his outrage into tics, twitches, and a series of uncontrollable accidents which Dreyfuss can only share with his analyst, the audience, and finally, his least favorite detective.
“By your reasoning, Clouseau, you are the greatest foreteller ever, after Custer claimed he would surround all those Indians.”
Watching the film again, I could not help but notice how every single scene is set on a sound stage, save for some second-unit shots of Paris (those police vans with sirens) and a clip of a British estate that was intended to depict the Ballon mansion.
Parisian salons or parks with a view, a greenhouse-cum-nudist lake resort, it was all set in MGM’s London studios. A Radford Mini DeVille roars into the scene, a Jaguar races out of it, and all of it is staged.
This round, I focused more on Sanders and observed how he maintained his composure while Sellers tried to get a laugh out of him. Was Sellers just obnoxious? I’ve gone through pretty much every biography of Sellers that I can find, but I can’t remember.
That’s how the scene plays out, the near unshakeable subject’s behavioral patterns look like something an actor portraying someone suppressing their anger would act like in a scenario where they were on set with Sellers, who is known for his ability to come up with unique methods in his attempt to wreck a billiard parlor.
The nudist colony part was significantly more cheeky than how it is perceived today, however there’s still some amusement value in how they try to cover up the stars’ bits and pieces. Mike Myers has cited Sellers as a major influence on him, and the Austin Powers franchise draws inspiration from Sellers as James Bond in Casino Royale and his portrayal of Inspector Clouseau.
For every excitement about the French perfunctorily styled setting or the American plot for the movie, the film “The Pink Panther” retains its British individuality. The setting is strong in scents of British romanticism and nostalgia. The French are scoffed at in a comfortable manner through the characters Clouseau and Dreyfus. It is like a quintessential British romance that even the English are not proud of but eventually hoist the British flag. The essence of France captures a lifestyle where the pubs fed the flamenco and as the drink flowed the night morphed into sophisticated Russian designer nightclubs. The night was a ride through the French Citroens, Renaults, and old Parisian nightclubs Is all a person needs to hit the pub.
The role of Turk, the folk guitarist and bouncer who blocks a desperately drunken Clouseau from dancing went to Bryan Forbes. “The Pink Panther” was played by one of the most talented actors and screenwriters of all time. Forbes is famous for international Velvet, The Mad Woman of Chaillot, and Stepford Wives among many more robust films to his name.
Although the funny clamor espionage music isn’t impressive, the detective comedy spending foster filming, known as Montgomery. He is still known for his saxophone-heavy theme, The Pink Panther. However, the cameo appears to be more well hidden than when you type Easter hello into non-existent search bar and realize there are no results.
Mancini stepped back to let the animated Pink Panther do his thing in the credits of the movie. But watch how Clouseau enters Camp Sunshine, attempting to mingle with the joyful skinny nudists. It’s clear that theme music is being played by the house band as Clouseau walks past them.
Who on earth is that tall, bald, and shirtless Italian American saxophone player?! Please note that the saxophone player is jamming with the band on the other side of the frame.
No, “A Shot in the Dark” does not make me laugh as much as it did when I first watched it. But it is still funny even as it develops into something resembling comic chaos in one of the murder mystery spectacles, where the star happens to be one of the most unpredictable people to step in front of the camera and turn a botched attempt into a masterpiece that continues to amuse even till date.
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