A Shot in the Dark

1964's A SHOT IN THE DARK always seemed like the dark horse in the Pink Panther series, at least the ones starring Peter Sellers as the bumbling Inspector Jacques Clouseau. So I avoided it.  I grew up watching the 1963 original and the many sequels in the '70s and beyond.  A SHOT IN THE DARK didn't have the famous animated cat in its title, and I'd heard that Henry Mancini's score was different than that most beloved theme.  The heresy! In fact, this film (the second in the franchise) did not have an original screenplay but was rather based on two plays: one with the same title from 1961 by Harry Kurnitz and 1960's L'Idiote by Marcel Achard.  Intriguingly, William Peter Blatty wrote it along with director Blake Edwards. 

Now I can just about shoot myself for putting it off.  This is what I consider a template for slapstick comedy.  A masterful example of how to pull off physical and verbal humor.  Edwards demonstrated this numerous times in his career, even in some of his later misfires, but perhaps never better than here.  What really struck me was how controlled it was.  Never once tripping over that fine line of the hilarious and off-puttingly silly. The later PANTHER films, as much as I enjoy them, aggressively violated this.

Consider the curious relationship between Clouseau (Peter Sellers) and his manservant/assistant Kato (Burt Kwouk).  Always based on ambush, usually leading to pain and destruction.  It got damned near apocalyptic in the '70s films, but here it's scaled back,  just enough.  And Clouseau's forever agitated superior, Commissioner Dreyfus (Herbert Lom), doesn't quite bridge the divide, though his desire to rid the world of Clouseau does lead to some very amusing botched assassination attempts.

The plot involves Clouseau's attempts to prove the innocence of a maid named Maria Gambrelli (Elke Sommer), accused of murdering Miguel, the chauffeur of the very wealthy Benjamin Ballon (George Sanders).  Despite the fact that she was literally holding a smoking gun over his dead body.  It seems Maria was having an affair with Miguel, but as we see in a clever opening sequence, many in the Ballon household were carrying on illicitedly.

A SHOT IN THE DARK, riotously funny and sexy in equal measure, moves briskly from one inspired comic moment to the next.  Whether Clouseau (by now very well inhabited by Sellers) attempts a game of billiards with a curiously curved cue stick or traipses through a nudist colony, the film never wastes a scene, or the chance for a gag.  But I don't recall a single dud.  One can't say that about too many comedies. Especially ones of recent decades.

Yes, the opening title sequence with an animated Clouseau is sorely missing our pink feline, but it is a mini classic unto itself.  I read that one of the original audiences gave it a standing ovation.  The entire film deserves one, ma cherie.