Peter Viney's Blog

The Party

1968

Directed by Blake Edwards
Story by Blake Edwards
Screenplay by Blake Edwards, Tom Waldman, Frank Waldman
Music by Henry Mancini

Peter Sellers – Hrundi V. Bakshi
Claudine Longet as Michelle
Denny Miller as Wyoming Bill Kelso
Steve Franken as Levinson, the waiter

The 60s films revisited series continues… .

The Party grew into a comedy film classic, a film recognised by filmmakers, historians and legions of fans as a veritable masterpiece of often satirical slapstick. With its caustic and merciless view of the power players in Hollywood and the way they live, work and play, the premise of The Party could only have been dreamt up by Tinseltown’s inner circle.
DVD insert notes

Despite the offensiveness of Sellers’s brownface routine, The Party is one of his very best films… Taking a page from Jaques Tati this is neorealist comedy, purposefully lacking a director’s guiding eye: look here, look there. The screen is crammed full of activity, and the audience’s eyes are left to wander where they may.
Sam Austerlitz, Another Fine Mess: A History of American Comedy, 2010

OK. I watched it back then as it was about Hollywood, and my research degree was on Hollywood & The Novel. At university, I would have seen one ‘film club’ film most weeks, plus a commercial release in the cinema which prejudiced me in favour of commercial over art house.  Cinema was cheap. I had no TV, nor wanted one. This was commercial. It left me stone cold then. It left me stone cold when I got the DVD some years ago ( while writing a 1968 novel, I immersed myself in 1968 films and music) and it still left me stone cold re-watching today.

If I’m feeling kind, it’s a knowing homage to silent comedy, especially that of Jacques Tati,  but with sound effects and some dialogue. It pre-dates Mr Bean while occupying a very similar area with an accident prone nerd wandering through a series of silent comedy disasters.

The film was innovative in that Blake Edwards’ script, at 63 pages, was less than half the normal length for the running time. Edwards wanted actors to improvise. The problem was that 35 mm film is developed overnight, so that a director then couldn’t get instant playback, which you need for improvised comedy so as to decide what to keep, and what to build on. Edwards ran video cameras simultaneously with the main cameras. With twenty or thirty actors improvising, accidental gems could appear in the background.  This element is what attracted Sellers to the production.

The trouble is, I’m not a Pink Panther fan so Blake Edwards and Peter Sellers rarely make me laugh. Peter Sellers needed the funny voice to hang his lack of intrinsic self-confidence on.  Bruce Jay Friedman said:

There was no Peter Sellers. He was close to panic as himself and came alive only when he was impersonating someone else.

Sellers claimed that years of radio taught him to use accents as a prop. You could say accent is an easy route to character, a substitute for immersing himself in a role. For The Milionairess with Sophia Loren, he introduced his Indian funny voice. Not only that they had a Top Ten hit in 1960 with Goodness Gracious Me from the film. Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther series showed off his French funny voice, and Dr Strangelove saw him manage a Texan funny voice, Advance plummy RP and a German funny voice.

In The Party Sellers plays an Indian actor, Hrundi V. Bakshi, which combines his Indian doctor from the Millionairess with the accident-prone Inspector Clouseau, in a kind of Sellars Greatest Hits character. He is fascinating in that his character remains quiet, helpful and tries to be kind through all disasters. So I suppose the Indian character comes across as positive among the loud mouthed Hollywood sharks, and if they’d had a good real Indian comic actor playing it there wouldn’t be any objection. It’s the make up though. Why Bakshi? Baksheesh means a small bribe or tip or alms to a beggar in India. Ha ha.

I think my grandkids would enjoy the slapstick, but unfortunately I would not be happy exposing them to a white actor with heavy brown make-up playing an Indian. For the same reason, the brilliant Perry & Croft TV sitcom It Ain’t Half Hot Mum is no longer shown on TV, because Michael Bates, a white actor, plays the comic Indian bearer. We’d have laughed it off in 1968 but not now. It’s a pity, because Sellers could have done much the same without making the character Indian … he could do a dozen  different funny Englishmen. I guess him doing comic Brummy, Scouse or Cockney is ‘regionalist’ veering into ‘classist’ but it doesn’t upset sensibilities in the same way. I think the main issue is brown make up- we wouldn’t blink if it were a funny white European accent he was playing for laughs. It’s irrational, but nevertheless, it is offensive though they’re not making fun of him being Indian, nor do any of the characters at the Hollywood party exhibit surprise or prejudice. I hate to go for knee jerk political correctness, but the make up crosses a line.

Throughout, Bakshi gets wet so many times that you are expecting the make up to start running down his face onto his clothes. They must have had some good waterproof brown pancake. The accent, the toothy smile, the namaste … it’s all there.  Thankfully he eschews the wobbly head beloved of racist British comedians doing Indian accents. In places the accent’s a barrier (not that he speaks much), rather like being cold-called from a call centre in India at 3 a.m. (as I have been several times) or trying to phone Sky TV for help when the Sky Q box goes wrong again.  I start to feel SO bad saying Can you repeat that? for the tenth time. Actually, Sellars gets past it a lot by extensive silent whispering to other characters which both maintains the silent comedy (or comedy without words) and dilutes the mock Indian accent assault.

The story … it starts out with a North-West Frontier desert scene with lots and lots of extras (which must have cost lots and lots of money for the opening few minutes)… a kilted Scots regiment is marching through the valley while many wily Pathan ( see How I Won The War review!) sit hidden behind rocks with guns. As it started, Karen walked into the room and said ‘You’re not watching Carry On Up The Khyber, are you?’ 

A lone Indian army bugler stands up to blow a warning. He is shot many times by the Pathans, but in an extremely long death scene sits up to give another bugle toot again and again while being machine gunned. He has ruined the scene by trying to steal it. It is Hrundi V. Bakshi.

Bakshu with modern watch confronted by the director

He screws up the next scene by wearing a modern watch in 1878 then accidentally sets off a huge explosion which destroys a massive fort BEFORE the cameras start rolling. The director tells him he will never work in movies again, and sends his name to the Hollywood mogul producer, Clutterbuck, to ensure it never happens. Clutterbuck inadvertently writes the name at the foot of a concealed guest  list for his A-list Hollywood party and tells his secretary to send out the invitations.

Bakshi arrives at the villa. He’s lost his shoe in the pool

Thus Bakshi finds himself invited to Hollywood’s top party and turns up in his Morgan three-wheeler. He proceeds to run through a long sequence of silent gag situations: losing his shoe, messing up a game of pool,  playing around with the electronic house system controls, dying for a pee. One of the funniest is when they’re seated at a long table, and they’re a chair short so give him a low stool leaving his face at table height. Five years later, (1973) in the play Table Manners by Alan Ayckbourn we see exactly the same low seat joke. Ayckbourn would have seen it, I’m sure. He also extended and improved it.

Bakshi: the low seat gag

Claudine Longet plays an aspiring French actress, Michele, who is at the party with an unpleasant director (with a hairpiece) who sees her as meat for the casting couch. Bakshi rescues her for a romantic ending. She gets a song Nothing to Lose for the assembled company. I’m always mildly annoyed when someone pretends to play guitar simply while we hear elaborate acoustic guitar picking, eventually joined by other instruments on the soundtrack. It doesn’t seem to have any reason for being there.

Song: Nothing to Lose sung by Claudine Longet as Michelle

Bakshi watching, and desperate for a pee

Denny Miller plays Wyoming Bill Kelso, a very tall cowboy film star admired by Bakshi. I thought 1968 was a bit late for the Roy Rogers / Hopalong Cassidy look in Hollywood.

Steve Franken is something of a slapstick scene stealer as the wordless drunken waiter. IMDB tells me he’s called “Levinson” but I can’t see how they knew that … or most of the other named characters’ names in the cast list. He snaffles drink throughout, getting ever more drunk. The only audible laugh I gave was where a revolving door hit the cork in Franken’s mouth and he swallowed it.

The head waiter tries to strangle Levinson, the drunk waiter. Bakshi extreme right.

Sellers’ best scene is the bathroom which he finally finds after excruciatingly needing a pee. I’ve seen cistern and toilet overflowing jokes, but I’ve never seen a high speed automatic toilet roll or anyone trying to stuff 100 yards of toilet roll in a lavatory pan.

After nearly drowning in the pool, Bakshi”s given brandy, and as a Hindu who never drinks gets immediately legless. Though five minutes later he appears to have sobered up. Franken does a better drunk than Sellers.

The elephant & Mrs Clutterbuck

Eventually chaos spreads. The daughter turns up with lots of friends and a baby elephant painted with slogans: Love is a sugar cube and If it moves fondle it. The slogans and paint are the only 1968 markers in the entire film, apart from skirt length and then really just Michelle and a girl he dances with. Bakshi suggests gently that it is undignified to paint an elephant that way.  They say elephants are painted in India, but he replies that not with slogans the elephant does not understand. They wash the elephant in the pool, Michelle rides on it, soap suds engulf the entire set. People fall into the pool from every angle repeatedly and repeatedly and …

Washing the elephant: The Clutterbucks’ daughter and friends

A cult classic? I can see influences. I can see where they went wrong too. Far too many laughs are extended WAY beyond breaking point. Bugle? Funny for the first few times then daft. Dying for a pee? Ditto. Falling in the pool? Ditto.  One or two hairpiece / wig jokes are funny. Then it gets tedious. Waiter drunk? Ditto. Ultimately the bad decision to brown-up Sellers screws its heritage value. For example, a diffident Home Counties Englishman could have done it all, including the bugler. The accent would have been sufficient contrast with the Americans.

PETER SELLERS
The Party (1968)
The Magic Christian (1969)

THE 60s REVISITED REVIEWS …

A Taste of Honey (1961)
Sparrows Can’t Sing (1963)
Tom Jones (1963)
The Fast Lady (1963)
Cat Ballou (1965)
The Ipcress File (1965)
Darling (1965)
The Knack (1965)
Doctor Zhivago (1965)
Morgan – A Suitable Case For Treatment (1966)
Alfie (1966)
Harper (aka The Moving Target) 1966
The Chase (1966)
The Trap (1966)
Georgy Girl (1966)
Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
Modesty Blaise (1966)
The Family Way (1967)
Privilege (1967)
Blow-up (1967)
Accident (1967)
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘Is Name (1967)
How I Won The War (1967)
Far From The Madding Crowd (1967)
Poor Cow (1967)
Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush (1968)
The Magus (1968)
If …. (1968)
The Devil Rides Out (aka The Devil’s Bride) (1968)
Work Is A Four Letter Word (1968)
The Party (1968)
Petulia (1968)
Barbarella (1968)
The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)
Bullitt (1968)
Deadfall (1968)
The Swimmer (1968)
Theorem (Teorema) (1968)
The Magic Christian (1969)
The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (1970)
Performance (1970)