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The Pink Panther
- favourite film

The first movie of what became a money-making series, The Pink Panther qualifies as a British product because of its two stars, David Niven and Peter Sellers . And British actors provide much of the supporting cast: John Le Mesurier , who seemingly crops up in most sixties films, appears as a languid lawyer; and Ealing stalwart Colin Gordon steals his scenes as insurance investigator Tucker.
Very different from the succeeding films, The Pink Panther has the idiotic Jacques Clouseau as a somewhat peripheral character, the plot revolving around Niven as a jewel thief and Robert Wagner as his nephew. But Sellers dominates the show portraying incompetence teamed with extreme self-belief: Sherlock Holmes without brains, musical ability or perception.
Though the uneasy mix of romance (the incongruity of 53-year-old Niven winning the young princess), heist and slapstick can grate at times, and the set-piece scene of Fran Jeffries singing in the chalet for contemporary audiences just wastes time (this was 1963 and a girl in tight clothes seen in profile meant more then), the film was successful. Our view of Sellers is helped by the contrast with David Niven on auto-pilot, but in any context his clowning would have been funny. And director Blake Edwards did create the wonderful - effectively silent comedy – sequence where cars driven by men in ape-suits criss-cross a square, an onlooker prevented from crossing the street waiting for the inevitable crash; it is one of the great moments of cinema humour .

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