Over a long enough timeline, even a so-called “franchise killer” entry doesn’t necessarily put an end to sequels. On the contrary, ending on a terrible effort merely redoubles efforts (eventually), because you can’t end like that. Surely someone could do better, surely there was more creative juice in the engine than that!
So it was for the Pink Panther franchise, whose abortive third entry, Inspector Clouseau, was an abysmal mess of a comedy, featuring a quasi Clouseau, a pseudo Sellers, an ersatz Edwards, a Panther that could only be classified as Pinkish. The only question was how to resolve the most glaring problem with that cinematic abortion: Getting back original series auteurs Blake Edwards and Peter Sellers.
Both had finked on Pink in the mid ‘60s, life and career looking up for them. Both men married improbably attractive women…Edwards wed Julie Andrews. Sellers married, then divorced, Bond girl Britt Ekland, then did likewise with future countess Miranda Quarry. And for Sellers there was the artistic triumph of Dr. Strangelove; for Edwards, Darling Lili (eh, that’s a bit more obscure).
The 1970s weren’t as kind to either man, as each individually got labeled “box office poison.” In such a condition, and owing to a needlessly complex debate on Pink Panther film rights, both declared a personal truce on their former hatred and reunited to bring back Pink Panthers – It guarantees steady, successful work, at least, even if it’s not the height of creativity. Initially, the notion was simply to refashion the material into a TV series, which Edwards plotted out with an atoning Inspector Clouseau screenwriter Frank Waldman. So when he decided instead to aim higher and do a movie, it was an easy enough thing to refashion one planned TV episode into longer form.
The return of The Pink Panther, called The Return of the Pink Panther (see what I did there?), is in many respects an apology for the Sellersless Alan Arkin effort. It specifically combines favored elements from the two good former entries, The Pink Panther and A Shot in the Dark, and even announces its intent of rejuvenation in the title. Most importantly, Sellers’ return was trumpeted to the hills.
Sellers’ involvement was at great personal cost. He was in poor health, and also seriously questioned his own skills as an actor. More bluntly, Sellers was a ragged, soulless husk of a human being, a veritable philosophical zombie, a personality-deprived semi-being who exists only through playing other characters on screen. For such a transparent spirit, an unquenchable chameleon, purgatory is being denied the chance to create new and interesting personalities. Purgatory is Inspector Clouseau.
But even trapped in this same perpetual role, with its now-familiar physical bumbling and ever-exaggerated French accent (in three films we’ve gone from “room” to “rieum” to “rreiueoommmm”), Sellers found ways to stretch at least a little. A newly highlighted facet in the character of Inspector Clouseau is a love for disguises – It is this obsession which affords Return much of its humor. Here, Sellers allows Clouseau to become a would-be chameleon himself, a sort of Sellers-in-training, which then grants Sellers the unique chance to impersonate a man trying (and oft failing) to impersonate others. It’s all rather involved, conceptually, but one expects no less of Peter Sellers.
Even with this actorly notion, Return plays it safe (as it perhaps should in its shaky reboot status). Edwards’ plotting and direction drops the experimental formalism of his earlier years, rendering Return the baseline for the franchise. Clouseau’s bumbling is the source of, say, 98% of the comedy now, forgoing The Pink Panther’s complex farcical plotting or A Shot in the Dark’s meticulous running gag machinery. What remains is almost pure slapstick, with no other comedic forms introduced. To a casual viewer, it’s not hugely noticeable, but it leaves Return a shallower (yet still hugely funny) version of its predecessors.
Consider, the storyline in no way informs the comedy. It is simply an amalgamation of former elements, the first genuine sequel in the series, in that it heavily references past events. Justifying the title, the Pink Panther diamond has indeed “returned,” in that it remains in the possession of Lugash, a fictional nation now unmistakably a part of the Middle East. This MacGuffin – and religious symbol for Lugash’s made-up faith (how does that work?!) – is again the object of all characters’ desire. But really, it’s just there because titles are anal things, and you cannot say “Pink Panther” unless the Pink Panther is there, even though “Pink Panther” is only in the title to indicate a reconfirmation of franchise duties. Or something.
Or the title (from here on out in the series) could refer to the animated Pink Panther character, meaning…The Pink Panther is the only film series to be named after the credit sequences. (Now done by Richard “Roger Rabbit” Williams in place of Friz “Bugs Bunny” Freleng.)
It takes Return a whopping quarter of an hour for that damned diamond to be reintroduced, then burgled in a mite predicable cat burglar sequence – you know, lasers and booby-trapped switches and whatnot. And the felon in question is never even revealed (yet), so that gives us no characters for a mighty chunk of time. This sort of casual pacing is an ongoing Edwards problem. It’s also evidence of this movie’s TV origin, how events are stretched out to 2 hours when a quarter of that might’ve sufficed.
Then we again meet Inspector Clouseau, and all is well. Acting for now as a Parisian patrolman, Clouseau fails to notice a bank robbery, so concerned is he with a blind man’s “minkey.” It is instructive to compare the serenity of Sellers’ approach to Arkin’s previous flailing desperation, to savor how sure Sellers is of himself, then forget about that misbegotten former entry entirely.
In light of the Pink Panther’s purloining, the Lugashian officials have specifically requested Clouseau’s involvement – because he stopped the jewel-thieving Phantom last time (1963). To accept this, one needs a remarkably liberal interpretation of the events of Part One, along with a healthy dose of retconning. I mean, at the time twas Clouseau who was convicted of the Panther’s previous pickpocketing, but it no longer matters. Clouseau has become franchise hero since those dark, early days, and besides, no one was over-examining franchises in 1975. (No mention ever of Clouseau’s ex-wife Simone, to show how loosely these movies consider their continuity.)
Anyway, Clouseau rushes off to Lugash, leaving Chief Inspector (as opposed to Commissioner) Charles Dreyfus (a returning Herbert Lom) in much psychological anguish. Yes, Dreyfus is one of those Shot in the Dark elements grafted onto The Pink Panther’s repurposed plot framework (along with Burt Kwouk’s Cato, providing short bursts of most exceptional slapstick). Dreyfus is used here no differently than prior: exasperation as Clouseau’s presumed errors, hence Dreyfus’ deteriorating mental state. It’s mostly done independently of the rest of the story, and without even much Closeauian provocation – leading one to question how Dreyfus maintained his dignity in the interim decade. Wait, hold up, why am I applying logic to a Pink Panther sequel?! Just accept Lom’s performance as the lone non-Sellers bit of guaranteed joviality, and move on.
This we do, since a Pink Panther-based story must necessarily involve the, er, involvement of Sir Charles Lytton, the notorious Phantom from before. One-time star David Niven is out, perhaps owing to his remaining resentment at Sellers’ stealing the 1963 show, so The Sound of Music’s Christopher Plummer takes the plum role. Hope ya recognize the significance of the name “Lytton,” ‘cause the scant Edwardsian exposition ain’t gonna clue you into this guy – Hell, a memory from 10 years hence is needed for much of this (Cato included), which seems an odd thing.
Okay, so Lytton is the obvious suspect in this Ford-era diamond snatching, meaning Clouseau is off to his estate in Nice shortly after a mostly purposeless detour in Lugash. (His visit there is simply a capping of, say, 3 slapstick pratfalls it took Edwards 15 minutes in the intro to set up. He used to be a more efficient filmmaker than this.) But there’s one thing Clouseau doesn’t know – okay, there’s a lot Clouseau doesn’t know, but bear with me – Sir Charles Lytton did not steal the Pink Panther!...Er, this time, at least.
Yup, the plot rather gets in the way of the film’s sole purpose, to place Clouseau in random events and let the fumbling commence. Charles Lytton is innocent, a result of the fact he was the good guy in Part One. This creates a challenge, considering Clouseau’s interim promotion to good guy himself. Now these two rivals are each the hero, and so cannot combat each other. Rather, Charles goes off on his own joke-free subplot over to Lugash, to clear his name. This results in something of a muted Casablanca parody, with a little James Bond tossed in for spice. Blake Edwards is of the old guard when it comes to cinematic comedy, so he’s not one to push a movie parody to the forefront. In light of that, and his continued obsession with not making a fool of Lytton, all we’re left with in the occasional Lugashian detours is a sub-Errol Flynn sorta swashbuckler, when we all want a slapsticker.
More plot! Charles has a wife now, someone we’ve not met before: Lady Claudine Lytton (Catherine Schell). (It didn’t help me that everything in my notes is an abbreviated C or L or CL or LC!) She opts to lead Clouseau on a wild panther chase. For reasons left buried in the murky brain of Blake Edwards, she leads him to Gstaad, Switzerland, where both characters separately proceed to simply lounge about a ritzy hotel and not interact with anyone else. For most of the remaining runtime we’re unaware of Lady Claudine’s motivations (or Edwards’), so plot gives way entirely to “Clouseau tries ineptly to search a hotel room.” Story has never been a primary Pink Panther concern, but this is so minimalist we might as well have simply had “A day in the life of Inspector Clouseau” with the same result.
Skipping ahead, SPOILER: Lady Claudine stole the Pink Panther. Her reasoning: The retired Sir Charles was suffering from desperate ennui – That’s what you get for settling down in France! Hence she sought out the nearest MacGuffin, for fun. Thus when Sir Charles returns from nearly dying like 58 times in Lugash, he and his wife can have a hearty laugh over such tomfoolery, while Clouseau looks on and forgives all/doesn’t understand anything. Because even Claudine is a good guy, it all proves a big waste of time.
But there’s gotta be a villain, right? You know, ‘cause it’s a simplistic movie, now aimed at a family audience (Dreyfus’ maniacal murders aside, we’ve none of the first films’ risquéness). Pulling one out of pink air, Edwards assigns that role in the final 10 minutes to the Colonel of Lugash (Peter Arne, soon to be a reoccurring Pink Panther villain actor – though his character here does die). That’s because – somehow – the Pink Panther (diamond, that is, not series or, er, panther) allows Lugash to commit confusing international crimes and…
Look, whatever! The Colonel wants to kill Charles, and Claudine, and Clouseau, just because. Villainy and all. But ol’ Dreyfus is back to his usual “repeatedly try and fail to murder Clouseau, leaving heaps of collateral damage in his wake” routine, meaning…Clouseau bends down to check his fly or some such thing, and Dreyfus mistakenly murders the Colonel. Then Cato leaps in (so many Cs!). The plot resolves itself without any direct involvement on Clouseau’s part, and in a gag we’ve seen in a previous entry.
In fact, a great number of jokes repeat themselves from before: Much of Clouseau’s klutzy door-fu, his linguistic inadequacies, hell, he even gets shat upon by a bird again (though now it’s a parrot, so “new”). It’s the comfort in the familiar, and 11 years after Sellers’ last effort one can forgive the filmmakers from repeating themselves somewhat. And with a larger child audience than before, these gags are fresh(ish).
But most of this is a formalistic plot concern, in a movie where that doesn’t matter. The comedy of The Return of the Pink Panther is inorganic, owing rather to whatever arbitrary scenario Edwards cooks up for Clouseau next – half of this directly owing to his latest disguise. One such sequence sees our inept inspector impersonate a telephone repairman, in order to enter the Lytton estate. Others (seen below) include disguises as a vacuum operator and a swingin’ disco hepcat (!!!!).
In most of these roles (not so much the hepcat), Clouseau struggles with common household machinery, and in all respects blows his cover (literally so with the vacuum). Conceptually, these moments are purest silent comedy, echoing the films of Buster Keaton with their concern about the eternal struggle between man and machine. This is one avenue of formalistic experimentation left open to Edwards and Sellers, and they make the most of it.
One moment which stands out most clearly as an inspired bit of physical comedy is Clouseau vs. a revolving door. Again, no point to toss it in, but why not, eh? The only issue with Return is a drop in comedic density, as all jokes must now come directly from Clouseau. Credit Edwards the formalist again, who cannot throw in a tossed-off one liner if it doesn’t directly connect to the film’s stated comic premise – and Return features a narrower comic premise than Edwards’ earlier efforts.
There is a lot of down time between Clouseau’s great, bumbling moments. His antics do not need particular setup, making the result simply uneven. Nonetheless, when ridiculousness comes, it is some of the best the Edwards/Sellers partnership has produced. This comes partly of a 10-year gap, allowing for refinement in Sellers’ approach.
That is sadly tempered by a reduction in artistic play on Edwards’ part, as it feels the overall product is for the $ more than anything. There are even times when the slapstick is watered down from before. Consider the relative…bravery of A Shot in the Dark actively eviscerating its characters with semi-realistic results (I’m thinking mostly of Dreyfus’ severed thumb).
By Return, that has turned into something of a genuine live action cartoon – Dreyfus now shoots himself and others point blank in the face, and the results are pure “Looney Tunes” smoke and coughing except for when the plot demands a death. The power of pain-based slapstick is potentially undercut by this reduction in associated danger. The edge is gone, as we now laugh solely at Dreyfus’ stupidity.
But there are still moments where the early, perverse Edwards peeks through. Even at the end of a light and spineless comic romp, he is willing to utterly destroy the mental existence of Charles Dreyfus, all for our amusement. In a way, having Dreyfus insanely screech “Kill!” in an asylum straightjacket is far more cynical and cruel than any mere physical mutilation could ever be. That’s a good way to go out, and it gives The Pink Panther series its kick.
Related posts:
• No. 1 The Pink Panther (1963)
• No. 2 A Shot in the Dark (1964)
• No. 3 Inspector Clouseau (1968)
• No. 5 The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976)
• No. 6 Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978)
• No. 7 Trail of the Pink Panther (1982)
• No. 8 Curse of the Pink Panther (1983)
• No. 9 Son of the Pink Panther (1993)
• No. 10 The Pink Panther (2006)
• No. 11 The Pink Panther (2009)
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