By Jagmohan Singh Barhok
Remembered On His Birth Anniversary
Peter Sellers was a British actor & comedian who rose to popularity in the Hollywood in the 1960s & 1970s .Though he worked in several films, one of his most talked about film was Blake Edwards directed “The Return of Pink Panther” (1975) starring Peter Sellers as Inspector Jacques Clouseau, Catherine Schell as Lady Claudine Litton, Christopher Plummer as Sir Charles Litton, Peter Arne as Colonel Sharki , Herbert Lom as Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfus & Grégoire Aslan as Chief of Lugash Police. The film was part of a series of comedy-mystery films featuring an inept French police detective, Inspector Jacques Clouseau.
The series began with the release of the film ‘The Pink Panther’ in 1963 starring David Niven as Sir Charles Lytton, Peter Sellers, as Inspector Jacques Clouseau, Robert Wagner as George Lytton, Sir Charles’ nephew, Capucine as Simone Clouseau, Inspector Clouseau’s wife & Claudia Cardinale as Princess Dala.
The film holds an approval rating of 89% on the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes based on reviews, with an average rating of 7.4/10. The website’s critical consensus says: “Peter Sellers is at his virtuosically bumbling best in The Pink Panther, a sophisticated caper blessed with an unforgettably slinky score by Henry Mancini.” The American Film Institute listed ‘The Pink Panther’ as No. 20 in its 100 Years of Film Scores with 4 wins 14 nominations.
The film under reference released in 1975 starring Peter Sellers received positive reviews with special mention of Peter Sellers in the role of a Detective. The film collected $75 million against its budgeted cost $5 million at the Box office. “Variety” called it “another very funny film about the eternal gumshoe bungler, Inspector Clouseau. ‘The Return of the Pink Panther’ is in many ways a time capsule film, full of brilliant sight gags and comedic innocence”. Chicago Tribune critic Gene Siskel gave the film 2 stars out of 4, finding Sellers’ first scene funny but for the rest of the movie, “we not only know when each and every joke is coming; we know exactly what that joke will be. “The film holds a score of 84% on Rotten Tomatoes . The Washington Post in its review called it “a frequently hilarious and generally satisfying return to comic form on the part of Peter Sellers, recreating the role of the hapless but dogged French sleuth.
