Johnny Showtime: THE PINK PANTHER

 by JB

Readers who are more familiar with later iterations of Peter Seller’s famous Clouseau character might be surprised by the good Inspector’s first film appearance here. Readers already familiar with this first foray will still be mightily impressed by Kino-Lorber’s new 4K transfer of the film’s original Technirama negative.

This is a film I am very familiar with because I revisit the film’s musical sequence, featuring the delightful Fran Jeffries singing Henry Mancini’s “Meglio Stasera” on a weekly basis. (Don’t judge me.) The first time I spun the new Kino-Lorber disc, I immediately noticed the different framing. This new transfer contains more picture information on both sides of the frame. Compared to the new transfer, MGM’s older Blu-ray version looks cramped. Because I am a big fan of this terrific comedy, there is more to love.

THE PLOT IN BRIEF: The Maharajah of Lugash bestows upon his young daughter, Princess Dala, the largest diamond in the world: the Pink Panther, a fuscia gem with a deeply-imbedded flaw that looks like a leaping panther. Twenty years later, his government is toppled, the new regime claims the diamond is the property of the people, and Princess Dala (Claudia Cardinale) takes it on the lam.

Meanwhile, English bon vivant Sir Charles Lytton (David Niven) leads a secret life as an international jewel thief nicknamed The Phantom. Police Inspector Jacques Clouseau (Peter Sellers) has been trying to arrest The Phantom for years. He is not helped by the fact that his wife Simone (the mononymous Capucine) happens to be The Phantom’s accomplice, mistress, and fence.

Meanwhile, Sir Charles’s playboy nephew George (Robert Wagner) is thrown out of college. He tells his uncle he is going to join the Peace Corps; he really intends to seduce Simone Clouseau... or Princess Dala... or both.

Everything comes to a head when our principal characters meet at the Cortina d’Ampezzo, a ski resort for rich bored white people. Can Sir Charles resist the lure of the famous diamond? Will Clouseau finally catch him? Will other filmmakers learn from this delightful comedy how exactly to make a romantic farce?

The Pink Panther was a huge hit and spawned several sequels and a host of Hollywood movies that tried to imitate it. The film was in the top ten moneymakers for the year. DePatie-Freleng, the studio that did the film’s animated title sequence at director Blake Edwards’ behest, successfully spun the character into an animated cartoon series. Films like What’s New, Pussycat?, The Great Race, Casino Royale (1967), and The Party owe their creation to the success of The Pink Panther.

That the film works as well as it does is doubly surprising, because it started its life as a very different film. David Niven and Robert Wagner were always set to star, but originally Ava Gardner was cast as Simone Clouseau and Peter Ustinov was cast as Inspector Clouseau. When Gardner’s agent couldn’t reach an agreement about compensation, she bowed out. Janet Leigh was offered the role, but did not want to be away from the US for so long. Ustinov bowed out so late in the game that the film’s producers sued him for breach of contract. Both Capucine and Peter Sellers were last-minute replacements and had only days to prepare for their roles. I wonder what the Leigh/Ustinov version of this film featuring would have been like. No matter, because the success of The Pink Panther made Peter Sellers an international movie star.

Romantic farces are hard to pull off; they rely on sophistication and timing. I am a big fan of The Pink Panther because it takes its time. It takes its time establishing its characters, it takes its time establishing a rhythm, and it takes its time setting up its jokes.

One sequence about halfway through the film serves as a textbook example of how to pull off a bedroom farce. Clouseau has been called away on business. His wife lets her lover, Sir Charles, into their hotel room; soon George enters too, trying to seduce her. Of course, Clouseau returns early. How does Simone manage two suitors and one inconvenient husband so that no man in the scene is aware of any other? Edwards stages a virtual ballet of calculated nonsense and precision confusion.

The new transfer is reference quality. The original art director, costume designer, cinematographer, and director owe the transfer team at Kino-Lorber a debt of gratitude for making their work achingly beautiful, fresh, and vital again. I don’t mean to damn the new disc with faint praise or constantly reach for new superlatives, but it actually makes me happy that I lived long enough to see the video transfers of the last ten years. What a great time to be alive!

This is one of the best film transfers I have ever seen. Even if we are upset and hurting because of certain events going on in our country of late (or maybe especially when we are upset and hurting), at least we can take some time for superior presentations of classic films—art that is meant to get us through hard times.

And that’s something.