peter sellers: is he really so good?

Think, man, think! The reverence arises from the very simple fact that Mr. Sellers was a very good comic actor who made movies that made millions upon millions of dollars for their producers. The true source of the reverence is the money, not the talent -- although the talent was certainly there.

But yes, Lom's facial tics etc. = genius.

i hate dr strangelove obv

His performance in Lolita - yikes. So fucking brilliant. Subversive even. Maybe my favorite performance by ANYONE, EVER. Even Pauline Kael agrees with me (a rare event indeed). There's also a movie called Battle of the Sexes from a Thurber short story in which he's very good indeed.

Spike Milligan was probably funnier, but Sellers was the better actor. Most of his performances went downhill after the PP series took off, and he started to turn into a bit of a self-parody. Being There was the one shining moment in the Seventies.

B-but, whaddabout Catch 22?

I think the reason why PS is so good in Dr Strangelove and Lolita is that Kubrick was the only director who actually stood up to Sellers' hissy fits, answered him back and directed him. In his book Lewis speculates how good Sellers might have been as the Patrick Magee character in Clockwork Orange or even as Jack Torrance in The Shining.

The other running theme through the biog is that up until he became an International Star (and the heart trouble started - Lewis essentially argues that he was a walking ghost for the last 16 years of his life) he did good work but afterwards was, with a very few exceptions (I really want to see The Blockhouse), content to settle for caricatures rather than characters. Again and again he rejected offers to do Beckett, Pinter, King Lear, The Alien under Sayjavit Ray (ET 15 years ahead of its time), probably because he feared that if he tried Proper Acting he would be "found out." It's significant that he never even considered doing any dramatic work in the theatre; he probably felt a fake doing that sort of thing and in any case had enough of what he called "fuck you money" not to bother himself with it unduly. It was the same with Kenneth Williams; started out as a legit actor (Saint Joan, Welles' Moby Dick - Rehearsed) but afterwards (with the significant exception of Joe Orton) generally settled for what he termed "low farce." Maybe he just wasn't that good a straight actor - no footage survives of his Dauphin or his multiple appearances with Welles, so we can't really judge. I agree that The Goon Show is notably unfunny, and not just for age/time-related reasons either; after all, Hancock, Round the Horne etc. are still eminently funny and listenable.

Actually, in PP tradition, I remember back in the day, the time a pal of mine nicked one of the huge retort stands and made it onto the bus with it. He had the base under one foot and ran the pole all the way up his trouser leg, under his blazer and up the back of his neck. The teachers just figured he had a limp. What a legend he was, for a time.

Why it was called a retort pouch, I have absolutely no idea.

yeah, it's been my favorite biography ever since it came out, even though I think they cut out about 400 pages when it was published in America. I guess they figured Americans weren't that interested in Peter Sellers. (admittedly I doubt anyone is as interested in PS as RL is)

Really? FUCK. Now I've got to buy it again!

'I'm All Right Jack' definitely one of his greatest performances, and a real late-'50s time capsule to boot. Marvellous.

Hal Ashby!! Wow, mucho mucho drug intake in 'Easy Riders, Raging Bulls'.

And yes, PD, the Lewis biog of Burgess is equally great - it opens with this amazing setpiece of AB visiting Richard Ellman sometime in the mid-80s and carries on in a similar tone (eg loathing and contempt) for the next 400 odd pages - v. bracing stuff, and certainly not another shilling life that will give you all 'the facts'

"Lolita" is his finest performance; I always remember Lewis' description of Quilty's contemptuous air of aloofness - from a normal plane of life - on the dancefloor, when he first encounters Shelley Winters. "Dr Strangelove" and "Being There" are of course highly recommended. "The Naked Truth" is a very interesting early British one; giving PS a chance to show his range with an impressionist, sardonic character. "The Optimists" is quite a maudlin, but a very effective encapsulation of Old London-on-the-cusp-of-change. Sellers plays Dan Leno effectively - who he was obsessed by, for a time.

Also because no one has mentioned After The Fox, which more folks really need to see - if only for Sellers' hilarious riffs on Fellini.

"The Mouse That Roared" is another great Seller's movie.

Anyhow, I thought Geoffrey Rush would make a brilliant Peter Sellers, after watching "Shine"...

Just read that instead of trying conventional treatment for his heart problems, he opted for psychic surgery (charlatans apparently "pull" bad stuff out of your body without incisions, actually done with conjuring and sleight of hand), and this probably hastened his demise.

Oh, and "After the Fox" yes is great!

"i'm all right jack" is a p funny satire for 1959! (although sellers' role is the straight faced shop steward)

he was fucking great, less so after '69 when Hollywood kinda destroyed him for awhile.

astounding as the drunk projectionist in The Smallest Show on Earth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8xct7ved9c

Never know what to think of that nearly naughty number he sings in a subcontinental accent in a duet with Sophia Loren, can’t remember the name right now

it goes bum-diddy bum-diddy bum-diddy bum-diddy bum-diddy bum-diddy bum bum bum

He did a whole film as Comedy Indian, oh goodness gracious me.

There are at least three films I can think of where he played a comedy Indian - The Millionairess, The Road to Hong Kong and The Party

Ah right! I was thinking of The Party, the whole film is based around his character.

i mean when you've found comedy gold like that you'd be crazy not to go back to the well xp

he's funny in The Party OH YES HE IS

nuthin beats retrospective cultural policing

He is also great as the rather dazed and socially bland Evelyn Tremble character in Casino Royale.

The Millionairess isn't a comedy, and that song "Goodness Gracious Me" is not from the film.

Both IMDB and Wikipedia have it as a comedy, and 'Goodness Gracious Me' existed as a promotional song for the movie.

I'm just going by when I watched it.

I was quite young, to be fair.

He is also great as the rather dazed and socially bland Evelyn Tremble character in Casino Royale.

^^^ the bit where Orson Welles is pissing around doing magic tricks at the baccarat table and Sellers very dryly says "When you're quite finished..." is one of my favourite bits in the entire movie.

I Love You, Alice B. Tolls deserves way more love.

I Love You, Alice B. Toklas

I have his four albums. Search the Sophia Loren bits from "Peter & Sophia" and his final album "Sellers Market" which has some great Python-esque sketches esp. "The All-England George Formby Finals" and his best song "Gefrunk".

I saw The Party in high school, after friends had been enthusing about and quoting it for a year or so, and on first viewing it was very unfunny and also racist.

i think 'birdie num num' is kind of funny, just because of the sound of it and not because it's supposed to be coming from an indian dude.

I've heard a few records (mostly the Beatles covers and a couple impenetrable Goon Shows)

I don't think The Party is any kind of classic -- the only Blake Edwards film of his i really love is A Shot in the Dark -- but what's good about it mostly comes from him. Sure the casting/conception is racist, but unfortunately 'twas a staple of comedy before there was multiracial stardom.

I was mostly horrified by Casino Royale start to finish

"impenetrable Goon Shows"

haha, that was always my impression too. I have almost all of these as well as digital copies. I've tried for years to get into them.

I have almost all of these as well as digital copies

do you have all the Doctor Who episodes too

(used to listen to the Goon Show every week at noon on Saturdays when I was a kid, read the published scripts, branched off to all available Milligania from there)

i always meant to try again w/ the goon show -- i found it impenetrable even as a python/beatles obsessed teen, but do like milligan's books.

Milligan another member of The Goons who regularly played the Comedy Indian eg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry_and_Chips

i'm not sure the Goon Show is meant to be penetrable beyond "funny voices are funny", tho there's probably some esoteric 1950s politics buried in there somewhere too

*insert Pakistani dalek sketch*

That's a case in point.

I had the "Q8" scripts book, which was where I saw that sketch for the first time, and it makes perfect sense there. The idea that Pakistanis are some sort of weird alien race that exterminates everything including their own kids is shown as a ridiculous thing. And then, about a year or so later, I saw a repeat screening of the show, and it's just an incomprehensible mess where you can't hear the lines much, the daleks crash into everything on the stage, and the canned laffter drowns out everything and is so liberally spread as to suggest that it's all hugely hilarious.

A lot of the "Q" shows had too much canned.

I saw, and loved, Casino Royale as a youngster so decades later it's nigh impossible to hate, I know it's a total mess but it looks great, it's fun and the cast is just ridiculous.

only just struck me that the kind of twitter humour i like -- which is quick, absurdist, intensely topical and catchphrase-ridden, and relies on cartoonish characters in constant silly cycle -- is actually quite like the goons in its way, the goons my dad as a young man loooooooved (he and his brother would do the voices to one another): in both cases i think the impenetrability is very much part of the shared fun for those in on it, you get off a bit on just getting it when others don't

A lot of the "Q" shows had too much canned.

I think you hit the nail on the head with incomprehensible mess. More mess than incomprehensible though tbh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRJby3PCfbo

--> "Waiting for the Clamp Down!!"

God, this film "Hoffman" is a weird one - not good at all though. Sellers determined to play it as straight and undemonstratively as possible and just ending up by being a bit boring. Apparently Sellers was so horrified by this film he tried to buy the negatives so he could burn them. The character Sellers plays is a unpleasant self-pitying misogynistic creep - and that seems to have hit a bit too close to home. Nice theme song though, Matt Monro!

There seem to have been a lot of his films on recently and he is so fucking terrible and self-indulgent in some of them that I can't make up my mind if he really is so good.

I find him to be incredibly overrated and painfully unfunny.

For a 'great comic actor' he can be hideously unfunny. I liked him in "Heavens Above", where he played an idealistic Brummie vicar and was the straight man while everyone else hammed it up for a change.

I just saw The Ladykillers on the big screen and he's pretty negligible in it. I rewatched Lolita earlier this year, in which as Clare Quilty his strange American accent and general demeanor are off-puttingly weird, and where in the guise of the German psychiatrist he's definitely over the top. Still rate him in his best roles though.

Not particularly a fan, but I do think he's amazing in Strangelove (just as much for the other two roles as for the title role).

I'd say great in Strangelove, A Shot in the Dark, and Being There (whether or not you think it's a great film) and at least interesting in Lolita, plus very good in lower profile films like The World of Henry Orient. I've always enjoyed his characterization in The Party though I'm sure many would now call it problematic.

The thing about this film "Hoffman" is that it was supposedly so painful to Sellers because, for once, he appeared to be playing himself on screen and not doing his usual pyrotechnic mimicry. However, once you find out that Donald Pleasance was in the original play, you realize you've just watch 2 hours plus of Peter Sellers impersonating Donald Pleasance.

I feel like "The Mouse That Roared" (and Alec Guinness in "Kind Hearts and Coronets") helped create the rash of 90s comedies where someone like Mike Myers or Eddie Murphy plays a bunch of roles in TRULY HIGH-LARIOUS fat suits and drag. So, a mixed legacy.

I've always enjoyed his characterization in The Party though I'm sure many would now call it problematic.

I watched it in 1992 on the urging of schoolfriends and found it horrendously problematic.

great in Strangelove, A Shot in the Dark, and Being There

yes, also vg in Wrong Arm of The Law, enjoyable in Magic Christian, and obv beast mode from 1951 to 1960 on the electric wireless

Yeah, he's not really doing anything in The Ladykillers (Katie Johnson owns that movie anyway).

I actually quite like him in Lolita, especially in that fake doctor scene, which is just such a disruptively weirdly out-of-place bit of broad comedy that I cannot help but love its presence in the film.

his “strange american accent” in lolita = actually sellers channeling kubrick’s voice, iirc

I had to look up what Kubrick sounds like and yes, I can hear Sellers as Quilty in him! I guess there is something slightly uncanny about many of Sellers’ voices and this is often a positive.

Had a chance to see The Blockhouse recently, curious little film. Sellers, Peter Vaughan, Charles Aznavour(!) stuck underground and slowly going mad.

There isn't really room for Sellers to do any of his usual shtick, so he underplays it to the point of almost disappearing into the background.

I can kind-of see why it was buried(no pun intended), it would've been impossible to market and it's unremittingly bleak.

Never heard of it! Sellers was involved in so many flops from the late 60s onwards it's hard to keep track of them. Peter Vaughan is always worth watching.

It was left on the shelf for years after it was made and didn't even get a UK cinema release IIRC, but I guess it must've snuck out on DVD at some point.

Big-name actors wanting to do these kinds of low-budget heavy drama roles with little commercial appeal seems to be a very early seventies thing, see also Connery in The Offence.

From about '68 onwards we're basically watching the UK film industry going down the toilet, producing dozens of films no-one wants to watch, either a mass audience or an arthouse audience.

The Offence is directed by Sidney Lumet iirc, slightly different beast

It's interesting that Sellers seems to have gone from convincingly playing an insecure weirdo, who is called and old and unattractive several times in the course of the movie, in "Hoffman", to unconvincingly playing the 'handsome' romantic lead in "There's a Girl in Your Soup". He does seem to have made another film in between, but it does seem like his ego need shoring up!

... too many 'seems' there.

The most I've ever enjoyed Sellers was on an ep of Anthony Newley's variety show which comes as an extra in the Network box of the Gurney Slade series (which is great); they do a gangster movie parody and Sellers keeps breaking. Perhaps I enjoyed it because it made the cold sociopath seem human for a change.

The Offence is directed by Sidney Lumet iirc, slightly different beast

yeah, Connery and Lumet did three films together in four years (plus one earlier and another one fifteen years later) - but The Offence was a case of Connery hiring Lumet for his own project rather than the reverse. he did Zardoz next, so presumably wasn't thinking of srs low-budget ACAB dramas as his main thing forever.

I think big name actors wanting to do something gritty and low key to show another side to their talents has been a thing for a long time but I suppose it might have started in the late 60s/early 70s.

There seem to have been a lot of his films on recently

...on TV that is, "After the Fox" is on today @ 3pm!

Where? Can't find it...

Oh, it's London Live, you don't get that channel.

The Offence was a case of Connery hiring Lumet for his own project rather than the reverse.

In addition, it was a passion project Connery got to make at United Artists in return for doing Diamonds Are Forever.

Love this version of 'After the fox"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyBO9nmP3cs

Bass – Toshiaki Sudoh*
Bass, Backing Vocals, Guitar, Banjo, Harpsichord – Jim O'Rourke
Drums – Glenn Kotche
Piano – Kyoko Kuroda
Vocals – Masaya Nakahara
Vocals, Clarinet – Akira Sakata

also vg in Wrong Arm of The Law

Yes, I think the post-Ladykillers, pre- Kubrick period is his most satisfying - or at least, his funniest. He's also great as 'Sonny McGregor' in The Naked Truth, which has a terrific comedy cast - Sellers, Terry-Thomas, Peggy Mount, Dennis Price, Joan Sims etc.

Also because no one has mentioned After The Fox, which more folks really need to see - if only for Sellers' hilarious riffs on Fellini.

He looks like Antonioni though.

... wearing Godard's spectacles.

"After the Fox". Sellers is good in this but Victor Mature gets more laughs. Anyway, takes far too long to get to the movie director plot, which is the only funny part of the film and, even then, there's more grins than laughs.

Yet another Sellers' movie on today - "The World of Henry Orient" - a film I've never even heard of tbh.

I love The World of Henry Orient but I only could only manage about 10 minutes of After the Fox when I caught it on TV a few years ago.

... wearing Godard's spectacles.

For a 'great comic actor' he can be hideously unfunny

otm

I love The World of Henry Orient but I only could only manage about 10 minutes of After the Fox when I caught it on TV a few years ago.

The first half an hour (or more?) of "After the Fox" isn't very good, it picks up when Victor Mature and Martin Balsam show up. Sellers is good in "The World of Henry Orient" but I thought the film was a bit... silly? The girl on the bus, who is only in it for like five minutes, is great though.

Another curio from Sellers' Inspector Clouseau interregnum was on on Sunday and it's on again tonight (on Talking Pictures): "The Blockhouse", from 1973. I started watching it but gave up as it seemed to consist entirely of hairy sweaty men shouting incomprehensibly at each other... in the dark. Sellers' performance is supposed to be good in this but it was Peter Vaughan who looked the most impressive. Sellers was playing a Frenchman and it was somewhat interesting to hear him trying hard not to do Clouseau. Pretty badly made film though, from what I saw of it.

Charles Aznavour is in it! But he didn't seem to be doing much more than glugging bottles of wine and sniggering.

As kids, a friend of mine and I tried to listen to the Goons--IIRC, they were either on late-night public radio or on tapes he rented from the library. In any event, our mid-American ears found them utterly incomprehensible. We couldn't understand most of what they were saying, let alone grasp any of the humor.

remember getting The Block House from netlix years ago out of morbid curiosity and yeah, it was freaking rough. no plot, looked & sounded like it was filmed at the bottom of a muddy pond, Sellers seemed to be barely awake... an incredibly bizarre misadventure of a movie

(xp) You have to expect a fair amount of incomprehensibility from Spike Milligan tbh.

I remember seeing him as the Gryphon in a film version of Alice in Wonderland when I was very young. I knew nothing about him, but I thought the name "Spike" was pretty cool.

And lo and behold, Peter Sellers was the Hare:

https://monstermoviemusic.blogspot.com/2019/03/alices-adventures-in-wonderland-made-in.html

Ooh, I just switched over to London Live and there's an interesting looking British crime film (from 1960) called "Never Let Go" on with a chubby Sellers as a vicious gangster ... and he's actually really good in it! I wish I'd seen the whole film.

Centennial festival on at the Film Forum right now.

Sellers wasn't a good enough actor to overcome weak material or roles that didn't fit his talent, but in order to make money, he accepted a lot of both. There just weren't enough surefire 'Peter Sellers' scripts out there to cast him in. He made a lot of mediocre (or worse) movies, but when he was at his best his work was good enough to be preserved and savored for many generations to come. So, a very mixed bag.

There was a BFI season, wanted to see Dr Strangelove and just didn't get round to it.

it's not the end of the world

Maybe you can jump on the Concorde and see it in NYC tomorrow

Also belated lolita xp

Feeling compelled to stream After the Fox now, which will not be shown on the big screen. Hope it gets a little better, as people have said in the archives.

So far it's mildly amusing at best.

Burt Bacharach soundtrack is good though, especially the title song with The Hollies singing!

All three episodes of the mid-90’s BBC documentary series about him are on the beeb iPlayer. Much of the home movie stuff is fantastic.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002j13n

Caught The World of Henry Orient yesterday at the retro. Bibi Osterwald got the biggest laugh with her reaction to one of the teen girls not knowing who John Barrymore was. Sellers is a bit confounding in it since you don't know what accent he's gonna use from moment to moment.

(There is another ILE thread dedicated to this film)

Passed by the little cottage across from Highgate Woods where PS spent some years.

The documentary about how Sellers sabotaged Ghost in the Noonday Sun is fascinating any shows just what a troubled man he was, with no consideration for anyone else.

Yes, poor old Harry Secombe having to put up Milligan AND Sellers. No wonder he became a Christian!

Reading all about his antics now in Mr. Strangelove by Ed Sikov.

Seems like the protective jealous behavior towards Britt Ekland in After the Fox is pretty true to life.

Think I will pass on Strangelove this evening and possibly go during the week.

Enjoying seeing him in the earlier films before his thing had sort of hardened into shtick.

Yes, he got worse as the 60s rolled on.

"I want more sand in the desert!"

They keep playing "Waterloo Sunset" before the screenings

Along with some of Sellers's Beatles interpretations.

Can't remember if I've heard "Goodness Gracious Me" yet though

The blu ray of Gurney Slade has an Anthony Newley variety special, Peter Sellers shows up for a sketch and is just blatantly corpsing throughout it. A very rare glimpse for me of seeing this guy actually get joy from comedy.

It's fascinating to watch him in earlier British films where he is still part of an ensemble, at least nominally but usually more so.

And he was still appearing in some of these films while he was already working with Kubrick.

Wondering if Goon Show is a play on Gang Show.

"You're not crying? My music does not make you cry?"

"Good morning!"

Wondering if Goon Show is a play on Gang Show.

― Seductive Barrytown (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, September 30, 2025 6:19 AM (thirteen hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Apparently the name was inspired by the Goons (as in Alice the Goon) from 30s popeye strips. However all of them performed at one time or another in military entertainment troupes, (gang shows) and it was that generation so …

Weren't the Nazis nicknamed goons by British troops during WWII?

Don't recall

Wondering whether I should try to see things like I Love You, Alice B. Toklas and Heavens Above!.

The latter is early 60s UK and harder to see, so maybe that.

Definitely not harder to see in the UK, it's on TV regularly, as are lots of his British films from the late 50s/early 60s, Hollywood ones not so much (I've never seen I Love You, Alice B. Toklas for instance).

I liked him in "Heavens Above", where he played an idealistic Brummie vicar and was the straight man while everyone else hammed it up for a change.

― Are Animated Dads Getting Hotter? (Tom D.), Sunday, 20 June 2021 22:10 (four years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Please probably better and more enjoyable

xp

Alice B. Toklas was on TCM late last night and might show up later today on the TCM app.

He is really good in Heavens Above but the film itself isn't.

That's reason enough to see it.

Also some other actors who I don't mind seeing: Kenneth Griffith, Miles Malleson, Bernard Miles, Ian. Carmichael, Irene Handl.

But maybe you see them all the time on the telly.

Roy Kinnear.

Steve Marriot is apparently in it too somehow.

Alice B. Toklas is fun and silly. Theme song by Harper's Bizarre. A Mazursky/Tucker script, just before Bob & Carol &...

...and it just showed up on the TCM app

(xxp) I forgot, Steve Marriott is in it! I mean, it's a Boulting Brothers' film so there's a lot of heavy handed social satire where every class is selfish and out for themselves, a la "I'm All Right, Jack", though it's not as good as it.

... as that.

Right.

Really it's just kind of fun for me to absorb all of these in one go while I am on a roll, especially the British films. Even some of the lesser stuff is interesting in context.

I had always steered clear of the Boulting Brothers.

Basically feel like I had been taught that there were The Archers, early Hitchcock, the better Kordas and Ealing comedies, steer clear of all the rest.

But then I saw Terence Davies raving about all the great British character actors so I decided to take a deeper dive.

Think I fell asleep last time I watched I'm All Right Jack ages ago, but this time I enjoyed it.

I had always steered clear of the Boulting Brothers

Brighton Rock though!

That one always seemed to be exception!

An exception

Well, not many of their films had screenplays by Graham Greene AND Terence Rattigan tbf.

What British Cinema has to 'say' about history, society, national identity etc - and the often tortured, evasive, confused way it engages with these kind of topics - is as least as interesting as spotting thematic/stylistic repetition/consistency. But that's speaking as a spectator/subject in the UK, where right now there's maybe more at stake than just the bliss of Powellian pure cinema.

Yes. Just checking to see if The Mouse That Roared is Boulting Bros. but it isn't.

Missed that on TCM earlier this month.

Basically feel like I had been taught that there were The Archers, early Hitchcock, the better Kordas and Ealing comedies, steer clear of all the rest.

Some faves that fall outside those borders:

Dance Pretty Lady
Men Are Not Gods
Two Thousand Women
Green For Danger
They Made Me A Fugitive
Snowbound
Good Time Girl
Seven Days To Noon
Home At Seven
The Good Die Young
The Hell Drivers

Cutting this list off at the end of the 50's because after that you get a flurry of activity - Woodfall and the kitchen sink stuff, Hammer, all the groovy 60's films we have a thread for - that I think truly cements the old British star system as a bygone era.

Thanks

Seriously, the text I read all those years ago was so negative it might has well have been written by Truffaut himself.

Of your list I've only seen– and enjoyed– Green For Danger and They Made Me a Fugitive.

I like some other Cavalanti's as well.

Aargh. Cavalcanti.

Went the Day Well? and even Nicholas Nickelby. David Lean disparaged the latter as how not to do Dickens, but there is some great stuff in it. Among other things, in the cast you will find Stanley Holloway, Bernard Miles, and Sally Ann Howes, along with Michael Balcon's daughter– and Daniel Day Lewis's mother, Jill Balcon.

There's a lot of talk about The Party upthread.

The text I was talking about is A Critical History of British Cinema, by Roy Armes.

Found a review! https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00315249.1980.9944034

And a review of another book that seems more interesting: https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/pdf/10.3366/JBCTV.2006.3.1.172

Anyway, nutshell is that any random British Sellers film is highly likely to be more enjoyable than, say What's New Pussycat?

The first Pink Panther movie is showing before Heavens Above!. I believe it is not as good as A Shot in the Dark but I might try and see it anyway.

Tbh I do think your average old British film is less likely to be enjoyable than your average old Hollywood film - a lot of stuff is pretty stodgy and uninspired. But it's an unfair comparison...Hollywood had the greatest artists of Europe running to its shores and of course SO MUCH MORE money. Is the average old British film less likely to be enjoyable than the average old French film? Can't really say, I still haven't explored sufficiently beyond the big masterpieces and don't have a TV channel showing old French films all day long...

I enjoy the first Pink Panther, more for David Niven and Claudia Cardinale being charming than Sellers. You can make it a RIP tribute screening.

Was thinking something similar. While I am waiting for Girl with a Suitcase to resurface.

Wrt his comedic Indian persona(e): have we discussed that none other than Satyajit Ray considered casting him in a never-made project called The Alien, also notable for having supposedly "inspired" Spielberg to make E.T.?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Alien_(unproduced_film)

Sellers has some nicely-choreographed scenes of buffoonery in the original Pink Panther which are the highlight of the film. As entertainment, it barely moved the needle for me when Sellers isn't there. Cardinale's scene as a drunk was good for the first three or four minutes, but went on far too long.

The Life and Death of Peter Sellers was on TV the other week. odd film, central thesis seems to be that he was an annoying prick.

I thought Sellers was great in the first Pink Panther, he's either doing or setting up some kind of physical comedy in almost every shot it seems. But there is big chunk of the film in the middle - 20 minutes? - where he doesn't appear at all and instead you get to see Robert Wagner skiing or whatever.

Lol

One thing I really like David Niven in is Bonjour Tristresse.

_The Life and Death of Peter Sellers_ was on TV the other week. odd film, central thesis seems to be that he was an annoying prick.

I'll never be able to find the exact quote, but I seem to recall one of his wives saying something like "I wish he was that warm, loving character he is on the screen when he was at home."

Which I found extra amusing and disturbing at the same time since that's not quite how I would characterize his screen presence.

“I tried so hard to understand Sellers,” Ekland says in retrospect. “I related his dark moods to the pressures and ambiguities of his genius. Where was the warmth, humor, and humanity he generated on the screen? There were interludes when he was truly a loving, gentle, and generous human being, but these moments were like flashes of sunshine.”

"The manic, antic, logorrheic crazy man turns out to have some sort of mood disorder/attachment issues etc. Who could ever have guessed?"

"You make it sound like that was a bad thing!"

As with any big star, there were many blanks for every bullet. One of the projects Peter was involved in that year was The Russian Interpreter, to be directed by Michael Powell. They met at the Dorchester on March 4, 1967, at which time Peter told Powell, the director of such classics as The Red Shoes (1948) and Peeping Tom (1960), that he wasn’t the right director for his own project. Powell asked him who he would suggest. Peter replied, “I don’t know, but not you.” When Powell recorded the incident in his diary, the entry was a single word: “Peterloo.”