The Return of the Pink Panther (Blake Edwards, 1975)

Blake Edwards’ fascination with the Pink Panther universe (five films with Peter Sellers, three more after his death) almost carries the air of a stubborn, doomed quest toward revelation. Return of the Pink Panther, the third and arguably the best of them (and I realize many might question what that could possibly mean in this context) exemplifies the core narrative momentum: Jacques Clouseau is a fool of such magnitude that he causes physical laws to break down around him and induces madness in his superior, and yet he keeps rising in rank and popular esteem, regardless that (unlike Sellers’ late triumph in Being There) almost everyone seems to see him for the idiot he is (at several points in Return, the co-star Catherine Schell is seen barely suppressing laughter, as if we were watching outtakes). When at his best, Sellers almost makes the character coherent in his dignity: his absurd over-deliberation in some matters (his propensity for disguise and false names) combined with total blindness in others; his perpetually odd pronunciation suggesting some unspecified secret origin. The title animation suggests a bending of reality which also recurs around Clouseau (affecting, as the moment may dictate, other individuals, light bulbs, vacuum cleaners, the force of gravity etc.), while also possessing a jazzy hipness that he lacks, but often seems to aspire to. Edwards makes a game out of shifting the coordinates (casting Graham Stark, who played Clouseau’s colleague in an earlier installment, as a petty criminal here) while indulging his penchant for plush living on the one hand (Christopher Plummer, as the object of suspicion, mostly inhabits a different, more efficient universe than that of the rest of the film) and his affinity for something more merciless on the other. The series already feels a bit tired here (a trait that would rapidly escalate) but that only adds to the sense of strange, displaced destiny. Oh, and in case it’s not clear from all that, it does actually make me laugh.