Chapter Two: A Shot in the Dark
By Brett Beach
September 23, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
To weave a final strand into this web of confusion, the Chapter Two of this film series is the only one (in the official canon) that does not contain the words "pink panther" in its title, and though it has very little indeed to do with its immediate predecessor, it is most responsible for establishing the recurring supporting characters, sight gags, and tone of black comic anarchy that the rest of the movies (up through the 1980s at least) would follow as their template. In writing this week's installment, I will do my best to stay focused on the second film. This is not a column on franchises and I intend to keep it that way. However, the history of The Pink Panther and the often quite openly cynical attempts to keep the series alive render it unique in my eyes and I hope I can be allowed some leeway in weaving this twisted and twisting tale while still keeping my aim true.
A Shot in the Dark was released in 1964 mere months after The Pink Panther proved to be a surprise international success, but successful in ways its creators could not have anticipated. Writer/producer/director Blake Edwards' initial intent was to follow the exploits of thief/nobleman Sir Charles Lytton (played by David Niven) through various heists across multiple continents and exotic locales. The 1963 Pink Panther is by and large a breezy relic of the early 1960s subgenre of frothy and mostly clean sex comedies set abroad and featuring a glamorous international cast. The film was rated G then and remains fairly tame today. I am not even sure if there is much in the way of innuendo, though there is a lot of door slamming and people diving under the bed before they are caught in the wrong hotel room.
But a funny thing happened on the way to Lytton being the star character of the series. The world fell instead for Inspector Jacques Clouseau, the French policeman put in charge of the investigation of a series of robberies for which he (rightly) believes Lytton to be responsible. What Clouseau doesn't suspect is that his wife is Lytton's lover and accomplice. As embodied by Peter Sellers, Clouseau is a breath of the apocalypse in an otherwise genteel air. Stymied by coat racks, fireplaces, violins and couches, he is a walking klutz but never less than sure of himself, his brilliance or the fidelity of his beautiful wife (played by Cappucine). There are long stretches of The Pink Panther (one nearly 30 minutes!) where Clouseau is not onscreen and many others where Sellers seems to be restrained and one needs to be reminded that he was merely a supporting player (even though second billed) to Niven. Since a lot of this first Pink Panther is lethargically paced - a prime example being the interminable sequence where Lytton attempts to woo the woman from whom he hopes to steal the diamond - the Clouseau sequences are a welcome intervention.
It can even be said that Clouseau is almost (is it possible?) suave at certain moments. His character never lacked for lovely ladies over the years either, being paired with Elke Sommers, Lesley Anne Down and Dyan Cannon, among others. Two ironic notes about casting must be inserted at this point. First, Peter Ustinov was the original choice for Clouseau but dropped out mere days before filming began and was replaced by Sellers. This also proved to be the second time in as many years that Niven was to be denied a franchise. He was among author Ian Fleming's top choices to play James Bond in Dr. No (along with Roger Moore, who would, oddly enough, show up in a bit part 20 years later in Curse of the Pink Panther.)
It was never Edwards' intention to continue as director, either. He had moved on to an adaptation of the stage play A Shot in the Dark, a frothy comic murder mystery, which had been a hit on Broadway in 1961 and which itself had been adapted from a French play, The Idiot. His partner in crime on the screenplay was William Peter Blatty, who would go on to infamy penning The Exorcist. Facing the request from the studio for a new feature with Clouseau, A Shot in the Dark became the unlikely jerry-rigged follow up. The bare outlines of the play were kept while Clouseau and many new characters were introduced. Central among these is Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfus. He is Clouseau's superior and it would be accurate to liken their relationship to that of The Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote or Tom and Jerry. Dreyfus begins each installment impeccably dressed, self-assured and calm and winds up being driven by Clouseau to bodily harm, murder attempts and at one point, global incineration. Herbert Lom is sublimely inspired in his portrayal of Dreyfus, with his tic-ing eye or outbreaks of nervous giggles and the best moments of the series are where he is allowed to interact with Clouseau and express his open hostility and animosity, and then suffer the consequences (office burning down, let's say) for simply having the misfortune to know Clouseau. Clouseau's indestructible nature, even as he brings unintentional death and destruction to everything around him, is the greatest sustained joke of The Pink Panther films and the gags built around this are the hallmark of the series.
As a writer and director, Edwards remains an enigma to me, particularly in regards to the lurching whiplash-inducing tonal shifts within his features. Many of his films feature sight gags and moments akin to those in The Pink Panther series, no matter what the subject matter or context of the film and many also seem to waver uncomfortably or unconvincingly between dark cynicism and mawkish sentimentality. Case in point is his bitter satire on Hollywood filmmaking, S.O.B (from 1981). The film can be viewed as an ungodly mashup of Network and Contempt with the rough emotions of late-period Cassavetes. S.O.B. starts out cynically funny and with a plethora of bad taste pratfalls before switching to a straight-faced earnestness in the second half, a shift preceded by an out-of-nowhere comic car chase along the Los Angeles Freeway. I remember catching this on CBS when I was five or six (which of course negated the cynical reason to see the film, which was openly touted in the trailer: Julie Andrews, Edwards' real-life wife, bares her breasts for the first time on camera) and not being bothered by how all over the map things were. In fact, the film struck me as a cartoon more than anything, a feeling amplified by watching it again last weekend and realizing most of the film had been committed to my memory after one viewing 25 years ago!
The plotting in most of the Pink Panther movies is beside the point and many times, it feels as if explanatory or unifying moments have been hacked wholesale out of the final film. Edwards and his co-scenarists have a knack for banter and individual sequences that are brilliant and when several of these can be strung together (as in The Pink Panther Strikes Again, which features almost nothing but epic ballets of slapstick and well-choreographed bizarre violent deaths) the result is intoxicating. A Shot in the Dark opens with just such a sequence. As a gorgeous cabaret style rendition of an original Henry Mancini tune, "Shadows of Paris," plays on the soundtrack, the camera tracks a roundelay of infidelities occurring at a country house. The sequence takes place as a nearly five minute tracking shot with no cuts and no dialogue, all in medium distance. In retrospect, it can be seen as nod to the stage origins of the material, but it is so deft and haunting (in tone unlike anything else that will follow) I was reminded of Antonioni's melancholic tracking sequence that ends The Passenger and would love to praise Edwards for the homage, but of course A Shot in the Dark arrived on the scene a full decade earlier.
The sequence ends with shots fired and a body and it is to this investigation that Clouseau is mistakenly assigned. He becomes enamored of the prime suspect, the gorgeous blond maid Maria Gambrelli (Sommers) and is convinced she is innocent, despite all evidence to the contrary (and several more bodies to follow). As with The Pink Panther Strikes Again, A Shot in the Dark is essentially a string of (mostly) brilliant individual sequences: Clouseau's game of pool with the head of the house, in which within a matter of minutes, the table, the pool cues and pretty much everything else not nailed down has been reduced to wreckage; a chase through a nudist colony; an aborted attempt at synchronizing watches; and a deranged riff on those clichéd "assembling the suspects to point fingers at all of them" endings.
Truthfully, the plot here is as complex and unfathomable as The Big Sleep or Miller's Crossing. I am still not exactly sure who murdered whom or was being blackmailed by whom, but since Clouseau, even with his convictions of Maria's innocence, remains clueless up until to the end (and through it), I don't feel too terribly worried. I mentioned earlier about Edwards preference for shifting tones and A Shot in the Dark is no exception. There is an extended interlude about three-quarters of the way through that features Clouseau narrowly (and blissfully unaware) avoiding death not once but four times, as civilians or innocents around him are knifed or poisoned. It culminates with Clouseau almost consummating an attraction with Maria, before . . . well I won't spoil that particular coitus interruptus gag.
I must confess that the fascination with Inspector Clouseau and his praise as a great comic creation remains a mystery to me. There are certainly any number of truly inspired gags, pratfalls and mangled line readings ("rit of fealous jage" gets me every time) performed by Sellers that are genius, but Clouseau has always struck me as a little too poorly defined to be a great comic character. He is whatever he needs to be in each particular scene: clumsy here but not here; overly dense this moment but not the next. This lack of consistency, combined with Sellers's overly improvisational nature best served by being matched with a precise director (look at what Stanley Kubrick did with him), leaves me cold just as often as it leaves me in stitches. The Clouseau that I most often choose to see (and prefer) is the one who is fairly a jackass, who brings things upon himself, but manages to suck others into his vortex as well. I don't buy the whole "there is a little Clouseau in all of us" unless that is not meant strictly as a compliment.
Edwards and Sellers collaborated three more times in the Clouseau vein with increasing commercial success throughout the 1970s. 1978's Revenge of the Pink Panther was the most successful of their five Pink Panther films grossing nearly $50 million. This trajectory was undermined by the hostility between the two on the set (a symbiosis perhaps likened to Herzog and Kinski) and undone by Sellers' death in 1980. Edwards then let life imitate art and practiced his own sort of cynicism, by attempting to resurrect the franchise in 1982-1983 (with Trail of the Pink Panther and Curse of the Pink Panther) and then in 1993 with Roberto Benigni in Son of the Pink Panther. Those three grossed $10 million, $5 million and $3 million respectively.
As much as I have enjoyed getting to know The Pink Panther in its many guises (this was my first time seeing A Shot in the Dark and several of the others), it is the non-Clouseau collaboration between the pair that I prefer to recommend to readers in parting: 1968's The Party, a hippie-dippy Hollywood satire that is a lot more kind-hearted than many of Edwards' films. It confirms that he is a genius with composing widescreen shots (very important in setting up many of his gags) and with taking his time (for better and for worse) in letting many moments play out.
Next time: The first film in this series was the #1 grossing film of its year. The follow-up was #3 in its year and was roundly judged to be a commercial failure by its studio. How does it hold up? Prepare to go back to the summer of 1992.