It’s possible that many self-proclaimed Peter Sellers-heads might have never heard of ‘Ghost in the Noonday Sun.’ This film, which was never completed, was directed by Hungarian filmmaker Peter Medak who faced a lot of struggles during his early years. He, along with his family, was tortured by both the Germans and Russians. He moved to England at a later stage in his life. While Medak was the recipient of glory that was the Goon Show, Milligan is viewed as a coms’s fierce rival and Sellers’ mentor and friend.
The film was never released and even though Medak took considerable financial losses, his career continued with almost every other seller’s film. By many, it’s viewed as a financial application that literally put Medak’s career at risk.
Sellers was treated as a companion by Medak at first and that trust still stings him. For example, Medak demonstrated some degree of proficiency at comedic direction in his film The Ruling Class, which was released in 1972 and starred Peter O’Toole as a crazed English aristocrat who believed he was the second coming of Jesus Christ. In order to escape his internal struggle, he has made a self-loathing documentary where deals with fellow directors who survived The Sellers’ treatment alongside some of Medak’s former adversaries who were present during the incredibly cursed making of “Noonday Sun.”
The film industry’s worst kept secret is that this is one of the most interesting documentaries of an unsuccessful motion picture to be produced since The Epic That Never Was, and the film is about the failed attempt to recreate the book I, Claudius. The most fascinating fact remains that it was Karda who commissioned the film, while von Sternberg was in charge of direction, with Charles Laughton starring.
Mitchell Medak has a unique method of storytelling for the making of Sun, using just the right amounts of nature footage to draw the interest of his audience to the inner workings of the film. Along with this, he includes the thoughts of his inner cycle. At the start of the piece, he meets the spouse of Spike Milligan alongside with Medak’s former business partner and there they say without filter why they were so filled with joy over the rewriting process.
Sellers adopts his first act of misbehavior deep into the shooting. While in Cyprus, he goes to the villa that has been rented for him but refuses to walk inside. I have specific instructions, he says, guarded by his movers and assistant who have to arrange my phonograph system and play Ravi Shankar first. After the music is audible from the house, they can enter. Sellers finds a copy of International Who’s Who in the mini library and looks at one of the movie producers, Tony Clyde. Sellers is not impressed with the entry on Clyde and orders Medak to get rid of him.
A similar story plays out again. As soon as Sellers targets Medak, the actor begins to transform into Fred Kite, the riotous union shop steward for his 1959 tradeunion comedy “I’m All Right Jack.” As he is an acquaintance, Tony Franciosa, who was cast for the job of a handsome corsair in the absurdist pirate extravaganza, is glad to work with Sellers. By the middle of the shooting, however, Sellers had turned against Franciosa to the point that he wouldn’t even share a frame with him, and so all the scenes had to be shot with reverse shot alternations. And the minute Spike Milligan arrives at the behest of Sellers, he starts to start taking over the shoot.
It is not only Sellers. Shooting a film on a ship, in the water, in the ocean as opposed to a tank where you have some form of control is practically impossible. One of the directors is said to maintain that “anything with water, even someone washing their hands, they don’t want anything to do with.” And here you see why.
There are many more things, much of which are shocking, but all of which is rather appetizing. Medak’s conversation with Piers Haggard, is particularly of note. Haggard directed Sellers’ version of the sad Fu Manchu film. Also, McGrath, who directed Sellers not only in the Bond spoof Casino Royale, but also in the Magic Christian, and the little known The Great McGonagall- bless him. In reference to a good movie, McGrath chuckles, “It was never fun.”
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