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A Shot in the Dark
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| A Shot in the Dark | |
|---|---|
 original movie poster |
|
| Directed by | Blake Edwards |
| Produced by | Blake Edwards |
| Written by | Marcel Achard (play L'Idiot) Harry Kurnitz (play) Blake Edwards (screenplay) William Peter Blatty (screenplay) |
| Starring | Peter Sellers Elke Sommer George Sanders Herbert Lom |
| Music by | Henry Mancini |
| Cinematography | Christopher G. Challis |
| Editing by | Bert Bates Ralph Winters |
| Distributed by | United Artists (1964-1981) Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (1982-present) |
| Release date(s) | June 23, 1964 (U.S.A.) |
| Running time | 102 min. |
| Country | UK / USA |
| Language | English |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
- For other uses, see Shot in the Dark (disambiguation)
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.
Contents |
Inspector Clouseau is called to the country home of a Paris plutocrat to solve a murder mystery. Although all evidence points to a beautiful maid, an infatuated 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 attempting to destroy him, leading to a literally explosive finale.
Inspector Jacques Clouseau (Peter Sellers)
Clouseau is the bumbling detective of the Pink Panther films, with an exaggerated French accent and an incredibly clumsy manner. He is somewhat short-sighted, comes to conclusions that would by others be thought irrational, has a lucid visual memory, and tends to be rather literally minded. Clouseau continually causes his bosses pain, and drives one particular superior insane several times over the course of the series. He also tends to blame his blunders on others (for example, in A Shot 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 over the course of the film, and by the end he makes several attempts to kill Clouseau. Dreyfus is consigned to an asylum several times over the film series. When he was asked to read the Inspector's eulogy (written by someone who actually liked him), he couldn't keep himself from laughing. Dreyfus is regularly released to return to his old job, but in short order Clouseau manages (quite by accident) to send him back again. In one film, Dreyfus becomes a (somewhat stereotypical) megalomaniac, who kidnaps a nuclear physicist and threatens to torture the scientist's daughter if he (the scientist) does not build a weapon that can literally cause objects to disappear. Dreyfus then threatens to destroy everything in sight if the United Nations do not hand Clouseau--dead or alive-- to him.
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 right 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, such as when there is a murderer attempting to kill Clouseau or when Clouseau is in a sexually intimate moment.
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 residents, the culprits continue murdering people, eventually raising the count to four. The murderers decide to pin the blame on the unsuspecting maid, with whom Clouseau becomes infatuated, forcing the perpetrators to attempt to disappear. Due to a mistake, they are all destroyed.
Hercule (LaJoy) (Graham Stark)
Inspector Clouseau's silently 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. His name is perhaps a play on the famous Agatha Christie protagonist Hercule Poirot. 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.
- Actor, writer and film director Bryan Forbes appears in a cameo role in the nudist colony scene, credited as "Turk Thrust".
- The relationship between Edwards and Sellers deteriorated to such a point that at the conclusion of the film they vowed never to work together again. They eventually reconciled to collaborate successfully four years later on The Party, and on three more "Pink Panther" films in the 1970's.
- A Shot in the Dark at The Internet Broadway Database
- A Shot in the Dark at the Internet Movie Database