William Peter Blatty – The Magnificent 60s

A pratfall still works wonders. An open door or window, anything that happens to be on the floor, or for that matter any object of any description – billiard cues, for example – within easy reach offers the opportunity for havoc – and a steady stream of laffs. Which is just as well, because this complicated farce, which might get a few extra brownie points today for its satire on serial killers, doesn’t do the movie any favors.

Inspector Clouseau (Peter Sellers) has acquired a more pronounced French accent than since his last incursion in The Pink Panther (1963) but it’s nothing like as excruciatingly hilarious as would be in later episodes. He still falls in love at the drop of a hat though this time the object of his affection is maid Maria (Elke Sommer) who, unfortunately, happens to be the prime murder suspect. She should be in jail but she is constantly released. Clouseau should be sacked for incompetence, but he is constantly reinstated.

The repertory team of his frustrated boss Dreyfus (Herbert Lom) and karate teacher (Burt Kwouk) interrupt proceedings from time to time but don’t really add to the laugh quotient. A bit more effective is the satire on French bureaucracy, a running gag on the need for an official permit, for example, before you could think of selling balloons on the street or trying to earn a buck as a street artist.

I won’t go into the plot since it’s a series of baffling murders and you could argue that Peter Sellers needs neither plot nor love interest. All he needs is an open door beckoning.

I was astonished how often I laughed out loud at something I knew was coming. The minute someone walked through a door you knew Clouseau would be the other side of it waiting to be buffeted. Any open window and he’d be through it and likely as not water would await.

He doesn’t just get tangled up in words but ask him to replace a billiard cue and you’d think billiard cues had declared war on him. He’s forgetful to the point of forgetting to switch off his cigarette lighter and naturally ignores the signs that he’s set his coat on fire.

For those more censorious times, there’s a foray into a nudist colony which is primarily an exercise in the various ways that private parts can be hidden from the camera while suggesting the salacious opposite. Clothed or unclothed you can rely on Clouseau to fall down. The only hilarious scene that doesn’t involve him falling down is when Maria miraculously appears in his office and when an attached key tears a whole in his trousers.

The various twists – Dreyfus is the assassin stalking Clouseau – and the lax French attitude to adultery keep the plot going and when the narrative slackens you can always stick a bomb into the mix.

From the outset, there is plenty opportunity for farce, the wrong people entering the wrong doors, continuous mix-up, plenty occasions for the innocent person to be caught red-handed clutching the murder weapon.

It almost looks as though the two aspects of the picture are clashing. Director Blake Edwards (The Pink Panther) appears to be helming a farce within which Inspector Clouseau is encased. You might think there’s a limit to the number of pratfalls you can stick in a picture, but my answer is “try me”.

With Peter Sellers so dominant, the only way the supporting cast could compete was by over-acting (Herbert Lom) or under-acting (all the rest). Elke Sommer (The Prize, 1963) needs do little more than look winsome.

Written by Edwards and William Peter Blatty (Gunn, 1967) based on the play by Harry Kurnitz.

Occasionally drags but lifted by the genius of Sellers.

You ever wonder what William Peter Blatty got up to before he scared the bejasus out of everyone with The Exorcist (1973)? He was a screenwriter, churning out somewhat formulaic comedies like this. There were two approaches to this subgenre. The potential lovers hate each other on sight and spend the rest of the film annoying each other before they discover they are actually in love. Or, they are kept apart by the simple process of one of them being in love with someone else.

Here Michele (Leslie Caron), widowed single mother, is trying to get her hooks into boss Dr Brock (Robert Cummings), a child expert, because she thinks he would make a great father. So, largely, she ignores the seduction attempts of nudie film director Harley (Warren Beatty). What Michele doesn’t know is that Dr Brock hates children – though some of his concepts (mocked at the time) seemed quite prophetic such as “corporal punishment is an admission of failure by the parents.” But, basically, she offloads the kid onto neighbors, keeping him out of the way till she gets her man.

Meanwhile, her cute baby John Thomas (Michael Bradley) is doing all the work of bringing the couple together. He more or less adopts Harley as a surrogate father and filming him turns out to be the refreshing new idea the director needs to satisfy irate backer Angelo (Keenan Wynn).

This could as easily have been entitled Babies Behaving Badly for John Thomas is introduced to the audience escaping from his mother and wrecking a jewellery story and spends most of the picture getting into trouble, for which his cuteness provides the requisite get-out-of-jail-free card. (The child’s name probably was the only thing guaranteed to raise a chortle among British audiences).

You spend a lot of time waiting for Michele and Harley to get it together, during which time neither of the alternative narratives – the Michele-Dr Brock subplot and the filming of the child – offer much in the way of sustenance. Theoretically, Harley isn’t the standard seducer of the period, the well-off kind who lives in a cool or plush pad and does something financially or artistically rewarding for a living. He lives in a crummy apartment in Greenwich Village and struggles to make ends meet, blue movies not as remunerative as you might expect.

Michele’s character is stuck in the 1950s more than the more liberated 1960s, with the ideas that a child needs a father, that you should marry for security, and that there’s nothing wrong with snaring a man by devious means. She’s pretty uptight and old school.

Warren Beatty’s career was on a distinctly shaky peg. Since his breakthrough in Splendor in the Grass (1961) he had been bereft of a commercial hit and not found critical acclaim, though there were some takers for Arthur Penn’s Mickey One (1965). Like other actors had before him, he had fled to Europe in the hope of finding better opportunities, but all he managed was this (though set in New York it was filmed at Shepperton Studios in Britian) and heist picture Kaleidoscope the following year, neither of which solved his marquee issues.

Leslie Caron hadn’t quite found her niche either. Nothing she had done had topped Gigi (1958) and though Father Goose (1964) had been a commercial success it put her in the comedy category whereas her more interesting work of the decade had been in the drama genre – Guns of Darkness (1962) and The L-Shaped Room (1962). In fact, as a Hollywood leading lady, this was pretty much her swansong.

Robert Cummings (Five Golden Dragons, 1967) is good value and the cast includes Keenan Wynn (Point Blank, 1967), Hermione Gingold (The Naked Edge, 1961), Lionel Stander (Once Upon a Time in the West, 1969), British television actor Warren Mitchell (The Assassination Bureau, 1969), Margaret Nolan (Goldfinger, 1964) , Viviane Ventura (Battle Beneath the Earth, 1967) and a blink-and-you-miss-it role for Donald Sutherland (Riot, 1969). Directed by Arthur Hiller (Penelope, 1966).

Tame stuff.

Tag: William Peter Blatty

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