Blake Edwards

Experiment in Terror (1962)

Experiment in Terror (1962)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, August 2019) If you’re looking for a missing link in the evolution of the classic film noir period into modern thrillers, then Experiment in Terror is a revealing example. Visually and tonally it’s definitely a late-period self-aware film noir: harsh black-and-white cinematography, downbeat atmosphere, and a plot that plays with a mixture of civilian victims, mastermind criminal and law-abiding policeman. And yet, at times, it does show the way in which the thriller genre would evolve only a few years later—whether it’s a gratuitously weird and creepy sequence in a mannequin-filled room, or the deliberate codifying of the heroine as vulnerable rather than the more common femme fatale of noir. The result isn’t completely successful—in particular, the film is at least half an hour too long and so dilutes a lot of its early tension created when a bank teller is targeted by a particularly meticulous villain. There are a few too many tangents, and the shifting of the tone from paranoid noir into a more straightforward police action climax is a bit odd. For modern viewers, Experiment in Terror (terrific title, albeit more suggestive of a horror film) is a reminder that director Blake Edwards, while far better known for his slapstick big-budget comedy, also made a number of far more serious thrillers. Despite its flaws, the film does remain a successful suspense film, perhaps more in its first hour than its second … but I’ll take it all.

Victor Victoria (1982)

Victor Victoria (1982)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, June 2019) Director Blake Edwards built his career with bigger-than-life comedies, so the gender-twisting outrageousness of Victor Victoria does make quite a bit of sense coming from him. See if you can keep up: In 1930s Paris, a gay man convinces a woman to impersonate a man impersonating a woman in a transvestite cabaret show. (We’re deep in Philip K. Dick’s fake-fake territory here.) Still, the film itself is a decent amount of fun. Julie Andrews stars as the woman asked to play a woman, but much of the spotlight goes to Robert Preston (and his great voice) as an aging gay man—his character is treated with some respect (within the confines of a 1982 film taking in place in 1934, that is), helping the film age more gracefully than most contemporaries. There are shades of Cabaret here (especially considering its inspiration, a 1933 German film) but don’t worry: Victor Victoria doesn’t have Nazis and ends on a far more cheerful note. It definitely comes alive during the funny cabaret sequence, especially when they result in musical numbers. The best is saved for last, with a deliberately over-the-top final sequence. While I’m not enthusiastic about Victor Victoria, it’s an easy film to watch and the cheerful atmosphere makes it all feel far more bearable than other comparable films (or musicals) of the era.

The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004)

The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On Cable TV, May 2019) Few biographies have as much naked contempt for their subject matter as this unexpectedly fascinating biography of famed comedian Peter Sellers. After all, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers exposes Sellers as an unstable, gluttonous, credulous, and self-hollowed figure, cruel to children and lovers, unable to depend on a solid inner core and all-too-willing to escape through his characters. I suspect that my admiration for this film has as much to do with its willingness to break down the structure of typical biographies than my growing knowledge of Sellers’s work (It’s a lot of fun to see the film recreate and nod at movies of the period, even some Sellers-adjacent ones in the Kubrick repertoire—the 2001: A Space Odyssey reference is blatant, but there’s a not-so-subtle one to The Shining as well). Structurally daring, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers reinforces its thesis about Sellers taking on roles as a substitute for his inner life by having Sellers occasionally portray people around him, delivering monologues that either reflects these people’s opinions of Sellers, or Seller’s best guess at what they thought of him—it’s not rare for the film to step in and out of sound stages, further breaking the thin line between fiction and moviemaking. The all-star cast helps a lot in enjoying the result: Geoffrey Rush is surprisingly good as Sellers, the resemblance between the two getting better and better as the film goes on. Other notable actors popping into the frame include Emily Watson and Charlie Theron as two of his four wives, John Lithgow as Blake Edwards and no less than Stanley Tucci as Stanley Kubrick. The tone and look of the film shift regularly to illustrate Sellers’s state of mind, his circumstances or simply the movies he played in—as an expressionist take, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers is frequently surprising, delightful and rewarding the more you know about Sellers. It did cement my unease with Sellers’s work (you’d be surprised at how many Sellers movies I don’t particularly like—click on the Peter Sellers tag to know more) but it informed my half-grasped notions about his life. Now I’ll have to read a biography to know more. [June 2019: And I did! As it turns out, the real story is even stranger, even worse for Sellers and just as disdainful for its biographer.]

The Party (1968)

The Party (1968)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, April 2019) Is it possible that the more I see of Peter Sellers, the more I find him annoying? The Party does him no favour, with director Blake Edwards letting him go wild with improvisation, and showboat in brownface with an Indian accent. The plot is paper-thin, and really an excuse to let Sellers run set-pieces into the ground through repetition and predictable execution. His character, a bumbling Indian actor, is designed to be as irritating as possible and it’s not an accident if the film improves the further away it moves from him. He is, of course, immensely destructive, with a climax of bubbling proportions. If you’re getting the feeling that I didn’t like The Party all that much, you’d be half-right—I couldn’t stand Sellers most of the time, but even I have to admit that there’s something magnificent in the film’s fantastic set, its ability to avoid relying on dialogue, and the sheer anarchy of the last twenty minutes. Still, The Party should have been a far more disciplined film, a less stereotypical one, and it would have been better with someone else in the lead role.

10 (1979)

10 (1979)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On TV, March 2019) If you’re looking for where that picture of Bo Derek in cornrows and bikini comes from—it comes from 10. If you’re looking for the origins of Maurice Ravel’s Boléro reputation as a naughty piece—it also comes from 10. If you’re wondering about movies in which an older man obsessively stalks a significantly younger woman—yeah, OK, 10 didn’t come up with that, but it’s certainly blatant about it. What worked in 1979, however, isn’t necessarily so warmly greeted decades later—the shtick of having a middle-aged man instantly fall for the bride of another man, to the point of following them on their honeymoon doesn’t get many laughs nowadays. In fact, 10 feels like an obnoxious film about a middle-aged white man going through a midlife crisis by lusting after a teenager. It’s very much a sex comedy from comedy veteran Blake Edwards, except that the laughs now feel forced. Pratfalls and goofs from a character can be endearing or annoying depending on our attachment to the character but here, despite Dudley Moore’s natural charm, he just comes across as a lout. I don’t think such a film as 10 would be acceptable today, and that’s welcome progress.

Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978)

Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On TV, February 2019) OK, world, I admit it. Revenge of the Pink Panther has pushed me over the edge, and it forces my hand. I have to come clean, even if you’ve seen it coming from the hints I’ve left all over the place. Are you ready? Here goes: I’m not that much of a Peter Sellers/Inspecteur Clouseau fan. I have accumulated enough data points by now to realize that I like the original The Pink Panther best because Clouseau is a support player to Niven/Cardinale/Capucine. By this sixth entry in the series, Sellers/Clouseau has become an all-engulfing, all-self-indulgent ego monster around which the entire series revolved. The plot revolves around him (it’s all about attempts to kill him, something that director Blake Edwards must have had on his mind at the time), the direction puts him centre stage and the editing can’t bear to cut away from his antics. The silly story hits many familiar plot points in the series, and can’t stand still by going from England to France to Hong Kong. While the budget is obviously bigger than previous instalments and there are a few comic moments along the way, the constant bumbling, perplexing fixation on costuming, graceless stumbling upon the truth, have become more grating than amusing—and that applies equally to the criminal and the romantic plot. Revenge of the Pink Panther was the last of the six “main” Pink Panther movies, and it clearly shows the reasons why it was quickly running out of steam by that point. Or maybe even at any point past the first movie.

The Great Race (1965)

The Great Race (1965)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, September 2018) I sometimes do other things while watching movies, but as The Great Race went on, I had to put those other things away and restart the film. There is an astonishing density of gags to its first few minutes (from the title sequence, even) that require undivided attention. While the first act of the film does set up expectations that the second half fails to meet, it does make The Great Race far more interesting than expected. Clearly made with a generous budget, this is a comedy that relies a lot on practical gags, built on a comic foundation that harkens back to silent-movie stereotypes. Making no excuses for its white-versus-black characters, the film features Tony Curtis as an impossibly virtuous hero, facing the comically dastardly antagonist played with gusto by Jack Lemmon in one of his most madcap comic performance. Meanwhile, Natalie Wood has never looked better as the romantic interest (seeing her parade in thigh-high black stockings unarguably works in the film’s favour) and both Peter Falk and Keenan Wynn are able seconds. The film’s visual gags are strong, and so is writer/director Blake Edwards’s willingness to go all-out of his comic set pieces: The legendary pie fight is amusing, but I prefer the Saloon brawl for its sense of mayhem. There is a compelling energy to the film’s first hour, as pleasantly stereotyped characters are introduced, numerous visual gags impress and the film’s sense of fun is firmly established. Alas, that rhythm lags a bit in the last hour, with an extended parody of The Prisoner of Zenda that falls flat more than it succeeds (although it does contain that pie fight sequence). Still, it’s a fun film and the practical nature of the vehicular gags makes for a change of pace from other comedies. I liked it quite a bit more than I expected.

The Pink Panther (1963)

The Pink Panther (1963)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On Cable TV, September 2018) The biggest surprise about The Pink Panther is that it turns out to be an ensemble bedroom romp with a limited role for Peter Sellers’s Inspecteur Clouseau—and, in fact, he gets played like a fool for the entire film, with a conclusion that doesn’t do the character much good. Sellers did such a striking job with the role that later instalments, starting with the follow-up A Shot in the Dark, would develop the Clouseau mythology in earnest. In the meantime, what we have here is a tangled mess of characters lusting for one another, with Clouseau unaware that his wife (the lovely Capucine) is carrying an affair with the master thief (the wonderful David Niven) that he’s chasing. Meanwhile, the gentleman thief is trying to seduce a princess (Claudia Cardinale!) who own the titular diamond, while his nephew is also trying to seduce Clouseau’s wife. It takes a diagram to figure it out, but fortunately the film is much easier to absorb as it gradually introduces its character as they converge on a European ski resort. Comedy director legend Blake Edwards slowly tightens the funny screws, culminating in a bedroom sequences in which characters hide under the bed and exit through windows while Clouseau remains blissfully unaware of how many pretenders his wife has within purring distance. It takes a while to get going and does end on a less jolly note, but the ski resort sequence of the film is a small success in creating a sexy comic atmosphere. Even out-of-nowhere moments, such as Fran Jeffries crooning an Italian song around a communal fireplace, are more charming than puzzling. Niven does stellar work here as an impeccable gentleman thief, but Sellers was simply spectacular enough that the series would therefore focus on him. So it goes—plans never unfold exactly as everyone thinks they will, especially in the Pink Panther universe.