A Shot in the Dark (1964 film)
| A Shot in the Dark | |
|---|---|
| File:A shot in the dark dvd cover.jpg | |
| Directed by | Blake Edwards |
| Written by | Marcel Achard (play L'Idiot) Harry Kurnitz (play) Blake Edwards (screenplay) William Peter Blatty (screenplay) |
| Produced by | Blake Edwards |
| Starring | Peter Sellers Elke Sommer George Sanders Herbert Lom |
| Music by | Henry Mancini |
| Distributed by | United Artists |
Release dates | June 23, 1964 (U.S. release) |
Running time | 102 minutes |
| Language | English |
A Shot in the Dark is a 1964 film directed by Blake Edwards and is the second installment (and considered by many to be the best) in the Pink Panther series. Peter Sellers is featured again as Inspector Jacques Clouseau of the French Sûreté. Clouseau's bumbling personality is unchanged, but it was only in this film that Sellers began to give him the idiosyncratically exaggerated French accent that was to become a hallmark of the character. The film also introduces Herbert Lom as his boss, Commissioner Dreyfus, and Burt Kwouk as his long-suffering servant, Cato, who would both become series regulars. Elke Sommer plays the attractive Maria Gambrelli.
The film was not originally written to include Clouseau, but rather to be an adaptation of a stage play by Harry Kurnitz, which in turn was based upon the play L'Idiot by Marcel Achard. As Blake Edwards and future The Exorcist creator William Peter Blatty began work on the script, they decided to insert the character of Clouseau into the proceedings. The film was released only a few months after the first Clouseau film, The Pink Panther.
The Kurnitz play had a 1961-1962 Broadway run, directed by Harold Clurman. Its cast included Julie Harris, Walter Matthau, and William Shatner.
Plot
Template:Spoiler Inspector Clouseau is called to the country home of a Paris plutocrat to solve a murder mystery. As all evidence points to a beautiful maid, a love-struck Clouseau stubbornly refuses to admit that she is guilty. As the real culprits attempt to keep everything away from Clouseau's boss Commissioner Dreyfus, they must commit even more murders to cover up. Clouseau always manages to be at the wrong place at the right time, including a scene in a nudist colony. As the Inspector continues to bungle the case, he slowly drives his boss mad. Eventually, Dreyfus starts gunning for him, leading to an (literally) explosive finale.
Characters
Inspector Jacques Clouseau (Peter Sellers)
Clouseau is the bumbling detective of the Pink Panther films, with a stereotypical French accent and an incredibly clumsy manner. Clouseau constantly causes his bosses pain, and in one case, drives one particular superior insane several times throughout the course of the films. He also tends to place blame of his blunders onto other people (for example, in A Shot the in the Dark, after falling into a fountain, he comments that he fell in because ". . . my idiot driver parked too close to the fountain.")
Commissioner Charles Dreyfus (Herbert Lom)
Dreyfus is Clouseau's boss, first seen in A Shot in the Dark. He slowly goes mad throughout the film, leading to the end, where he repeatedly attempts to kill him. Dreyfus is consigned to an asylum several times. When he was asked to read the Inspector's eulogy (written by someone who actually liked him), he couldn't keep himself from laughing. Sometimes he goes back to his old job, but once he went completely nuts, attempting to take over the world just to kill Clouseau.
Maria Gambrelli (Elke Sommer)
Maria, the beautiful maid for the Ballon family, is framed by the killers for the murder in question. Like Clouseau, she has an unfortunate aptitude for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Towards the end of the film she begins an affair with him.
Cato (Burt Kwouk)
Cato is Clouseau's servant, trained in the martial arts. Clouseau, suspecting murderers were trying to kill him, ordered a "training program" with Cato, telling him to attack "wherever and whenever I least expect it." This becomes a running gag throughout the films, as Cato chooses to attack his boss at the worst possible times.
Benjamin Ballon (George Sanders)
Ballon is the millionaire at whose house the initial murder takes place. Due to a complex network of affairs between the various people in the house, they begin murdering people, eventually raising the count to four. They decide to pin the blame on the unsuspecting maid, with whom Clouseau becomes infatuated, and forces the perpetrators to attempt to disappear, and due to a mistake, they do - permanently.
Hercule (Graham Stark)
Inspector Clouseau's silent-suffering assistant who is repeatedly asked to look at the evidence of the case by Clouseau and then reprimanded for jumping to the logical conclusion. Hercule believes the chief suspect in the case to be guilty although Clouseau, who is besotted with her, insists she is innocent and that the evidence points to someone else each time a murder is performed. In the end, Clouseau is serendipitously proved correct.
Trivia
- Actor, writer and film director Bryan Forbes appears in a joke cameo role in the nudist colony scene, credited as "Turk Thrust".
- Actor Graham Stark appears in all the Pink Panther films from this point. He plays a different character in every film (except for repeating his A SHOT IN THE DARK character for TRAIL OF THE PINK PANTHER and his REVENGE OF THE PINK PANTHER character for SON OF THE PINK PANTHER) although his cameos are not very large. In this film he plays Hercule, Clouseau's assistant.