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The Party (1968 film)

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The Party
Theatrical release poster. Illustration by Jack Davis.
Directed byBlake Edwards
Screenplay by
Story byBlake Edwards
Produced byBlake Edwards
Starring
CinematographyLucien Ballard
Edited byRalph E. Winters
Music byHenry Mancini
Production
company
Distributed byUnited Artists
Release date
  • April 4, 1968 (1968-04-04)
Running time
99 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$1.5 million
Box office$2.9 million (U.S. rentals)[1]

The Party is a 1968 American comedy film, produced, co-written and directed by Blake Edwards. Based on a fish-out-of-water premise, the film stars Peter Sellers as a bungling actor from India, who accidentally gets invited to a lavish Hollywood dinner party. The film is a farce with a very loose structure; it essentially serves as a series of set pieces for Sellers's improvisational comedy talents.

The protagonist Hrundi Bakshi was influenced by two of Sellers' earlier characters: the Indian doctor Ahmed el Kabir in The Millionairess (1960) and Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther series. Bakshi went on to inspire popular characters such as Amitabh Bachchan's role in Namak Halaal (1982) and Apu in The Simpsons. However, The Party has been criticized as having perpetuated brown stereotypes and using "brownface" with an exaggerated accent.

Plot

[edit]

The production of a costume epic film is ruined when Indian actor Hrundi V. Bakshi accidentally blows up an enormous fort set. The director fires Hrundi immediately and complains to the studio head, General Fred R. Clutterbuck. Clutterbuck writes down Hrundi's name to blacklist him, but he inadvertently writes it on the guest list of his upcoming dinner party. Hrundi receives his invitation and drives to the party. Upon arriving, he steps in mud and tries to rinse his shoe in a shallow pool in the house. He loses his shoe, with which he is reunited after much difficulty, when it is served to him on a silver platter by a waiter.

Hrundi has several awkward interactions at the party. He meets famous Western movie actor "Wyoming Bill" Kelso, who gives Hrundi an autograph. Hrundi later accidentally shoots Kelso with a toy gun, and escapes before Kelso can see who did it. Hrundi feeds a caged macaw and drops the birdfeed on the floor. He fiddles with a panel of electronics that controls the intercom, a Manneken Pis sculpture (soaking a guest), and a retractable bar (where Clutterbuck is seated). After Kelso's handshake crushes Hrundi's hand, Hrundi sticks it into a bowl of crushed ice containing caviar. While waiting to wash his hand, he meets aspiring actress Michèle Monet, who came with producer C.S. Divot. Hrundi shakes hands with Divot, who does the same with other guests, passing around the fishy odor, and back to Hrundi after he has washed his hand.

At dinner, Hrundi is seated by the kitchen door in a very low chair. During the main course, Hrundi's roast chicken catapults off his fork and becomes impaled upon a guest's tiara. Hrundi asks an increasingly drunk waiter, Levinson, to retrieve his meal, but the woman's wig comes off as well, even as she remains oblivious. The drunk Levinson ends up brawling with his fellow wait staff, and dinner is disrupted.

Hrundi apologizes to his hosts. Desperate for a bathroom, he wanders through the house, opening doors and catching servants and guests in embarrassing situations. He ends up in the backyard, where he accidentally sets off the sprinklers. At Divot's insistence, Michèle gives an impromptu guitar performance of "Nothing to Lose" to impress the guests. Hrundi goes upstairs, where he saves Michèle from Divot's unwanted advances by dislodging Divot's toupee. Hrundi finally finds a bathroom, but he breaks the toilet, drops a painting in it, gets toilet paper everywhere, and floods the bathroom. To avoid being discovered Hrundi sneaks onto the roof and falls into the pool. After Michèle leaps in to save him, Hrundi is coerced to drink alcohol to warm up.

A Russian dance troupe arrives at the party. Upstairs, Hrundi finds Michèle crying and consoles her. Divot bursts in and demands Michèle leave with him. Michèle declines, and Divot cancels her upcoming screen test. Hrundi persuades her to stay and have a good time with him. They return to the party in borrowed clothes. The party gets wilder, and Hrundi offers to retract the bar to make room for dancing. Instead, he opens a retractable floor with a pool underneath, causing guests to fall in. Clutterbuck's daughter arrives with friends and a baby elephant painted with hippie slogans over its body. Hrundi takes offense and asks them to wash the elephant. The entire house is soon filled with soap bubbles.

Back at his home, Divot realizes who Hrundi is, and races back to the party. As the band plays on, Clutterbuck tries to save his suds-covered paintings. The air conditioning blows suds everywhere as the guests dance, and Clutterbuck's distraught wife repeatedly falls into the pool. Divot pulls up as the police and fire department personnel work to resolve everything. Hrundi apologizes one last time to Clutterbuck as Divot reveals who Hrundi is, but Clutterbuck accidentally chokes the headwaiter instead of Hrundi. Kelso gives Hrundi an autographed photo and Stetson hat as Hrundi and Michèle leave in Hrundi's Morgan three-wheeler car. Outside her apartment, Hrundi gives Michèle the hat as a keepsake, and she says he can come get it any time. Hrundi suggests next week, and she readily agrees. Hrundi smiles and drives off as his car backfires.

Cast

[edit]

Vin Scully is uncredited and does not appear onscreen, but his voice can be heard announcing a Los Angeles Dodgers game on the kitchen radio.[2]

Production

[edit]

The Party was the only non-Pink Panther collaboration between Sellers and Edwards. Producer Walter Mirisch knew that Sellers and Edwards were considered liabilities; in his autobiography, Mirisch wrote "Blake had achieved a reputation as a very expensive director, particularly after The Great Race."[3] Sellers had played an Indian man (Dr. Ahmed el Kabir) in his hit film The Millionairess (1960), and another Indian physician in The Road to Hong Kong (1962). He is mostly remembered as a similar klutz as Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther series.

The film's interiors were shot on a set, at the MGM lot, though this may be a mistake as IMDb lists the Samuel Goldwyn Studios on Formosa as the correct address, likely as other Mirisch Productions, including West Side Story, were shot there as well. The original script was only 63 pages in length.[4] Edwards later said it was the shortest script he ever shot from, and that the majority of the content in the film was improvised on set.[5]

The film started shooting in May 1967 under the title RSVP, [6] and lasted for 12 weeks over the summer of 1967. Edwards and Sellers had initially attempted to film part of it as a modern silent picture with subtitles, but Sellers soon found a need to speak and develop the character of Hrundi V. Bakshi, a name he came up with on the spot. Several cast and crew members described the production as the most enjoyable of their career, with Denny Miller describing it as "heaven", stating that they knew it was something special when cast and crew not even involved with the shooting of certain scenes would stick around just to watch the filming. Claudine Longet very visibly found it difficult to keep a straight face in many scenes. Steve Franken, who played the drunken butler, thoroughly enjoyed being allowed to improvise, but noted the dangers of the foam in the water and struggled to breathe. The pool scene where his love interest pours a bottle on his face was improvised due to him murmuring to her to clear the foam from his face as he couldn't breathe.[5]

The film draws much inspiration from the works of Jacques Tati; Bakshi arrives at the party in a Morgan three-wheeler which may suggest Monsieur Hulot's car in Monsieur Hulot's Holiday. However, it was not the same car (Salmson AL3). The entire film storyline is reminiscent of the Royal Garden restaurant sequence of Playtime, and the comedic interaction with inanimate objects and gadgets parallels several of Tati's films, especially Mon Oncle.[7]

Soundtrack

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The score of The Party was composed by Henry Mancini, including the song "Nothing to Lose," performed onscreen by Claudine Longet. Mancini, commenting on audience reactions, noted, "That's what I get for writing a nice song for a comedy. Nobody's going to hear a note of it."[8] During a scene later in the film, the band can be heard playing "It Had Better Be Tonight (Meglio stasera)," a song Mancini composed for the first Pink Panther film. The CD originally was released on August 20, 1995, by BMG Victor.

Track listing

Side 1:

  1. "The Party" (Vocal) 2:14
  2. "Brunette in Yellow" 2:56
  3. "Nothing to Lose" (Instrumental) 3:18
  4. "Chicken Little Was Right" 2:54
  5. "Candleleight on Crystal" 3:05
  6. "Birdie Num-Num" 2:21

Side 2:

  1. "Nothing to Lose" (Vocal) 2:25
  2. "The Happy Pipers" 2:17
  3. "Party Poop" 2:34
  4. "Elegant" 4:44
  5. "Wiggy" 3:02
  6. "The Party" (Instrumental) 3:12

Reception

[edit]

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 83% based on 23 reviews, with an average score of 6.60/10.[9]

The Party is considered a classic comedic cult film.[10][4] Edwards' biographers Peter Lehman and William Luhr said, "The Party may very well be one of the most radically experimental films in Hollywood history; in fact it may be the single most radical film since D.W. Griffith's style came to dominate the American cinema."[11][12] Saul Austerlitz wrote "Despite the offensiveness of Sellers's brownface routine, The Party is one of his very best films...Taking a page from Tati, this is neorealist comedy, purposefully lacking a director's guiding eye: look here, look there. The screen is crammed full of activity, and the audience's eyes are left to wander where they may."[13]

Racial criticism

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The Party has been criticized as having perpetuated brown stereotypes[14] and using "brownface" with an exaggerated accent.[15] Shane Danielson described it in The Guardian as "A comic masterpiece - yet hardly the most enlightened depiction of our subcontinental brothers. Still, propelled by Sellers's insane brio, this late display of blackface provided some guilty chuckles, and at least one enduring catchphrase (the immortal 'Birdie num-num')."[16] (Edwards has run into similar later criticism for his inclusion of Mickey Rooney's overbroad Japanese caricature in Breakfast at Tiffany's).

However, the film was also hugely popular in India. The late Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was a fan and was very fond of repeating Bakshi's line "In India we don't think who we are, we know who we are!", the character's reply to a hostile "Who do you think you are?"[17][18][19][20] The character Hrundi Bakshi also inspired Amitabh Bachchan's character Arjun Singh in the 1982 Bollywood blockbuster Namak Halaal.[21] Additionally, for his film The Alien, Indian director Satyajit Ray was planning on casting Sellers as a Marwari businessman. Ray was a fan of Sellers, and believed he could convincingly portray Indian characters based on his performances in The Party and The Millionairess. Sellers eventually pulled out of the project and the film fell apart.[22]

References

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  1. ^ "Big Rental Films of 1968", Variety, 8 January 1969, p. 15.
  2. ^ Koseluk, Chris (April 16, 2008). "The voice of generations". The Hollywood Reporter.
  3. ^ Mirisch, Walter (2008). I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0-299-22640-4.
  4. ^ a b Aushenker, Michael (June 25, 2008). "'The Party' to Remember: Blake Edwards' Cult Classic Turns 40!". Palisadian-Post. Archived from the original on April 9, 2009. Retrieved August 18, 2012.
  5. ^ a b Inside "The Party" Documentary. MGM Home Entertainment Special Edition DVD. 2004. Retrieved May 19, 2024.
  6. ^ Champlin, Charles (May 14, 1967). "A Sellers' Market for Comedy: A Sellers' Market for Comedy". Los Angeles Times. p. c1.
  7. ^ Robinson, Tasha (April 19, 2002). "The Party (DVD)". The A.V. Club.
  8. ^ Champlin, Charles (March 15, 1968). An open invitation to play it off the cuff. Time
  9. ^ The Party, Rotten Tomatoes, retrieved March 19, 2022
  10. ^ Stafford, Jeff. Cult Movies: The Party via Turner Classic Movies
  11. ^ Wasson, Sam (2009). A Splurch in the Kisser: The Movies of Blake Edwards. Wesleyan University Press. p. 130. ISBN 978-0-8195-6915-8.
  12. ^ Luhr, William; Lehman, Peter (1989). Returning to the Scene: Blake Edwards. Vol. 2. Ohio University Press. ISBN 978-0-8214-0917-6.
  13. ^ Austerlitz, Saul (2010). Another Fine Mess: A History of American Film Comedy. Chicago Review Press. p. 198. ISBN 978-1-55652-951-1.
  14. ^ "In 'The Party', Peter Sellers' Brownface Is the Elephant in the Room". PopMatters. October 27, 2014. Retrieved June 20, 2020.
  15. ^ "Peter Sellers: 10 essential films". British Film Institute. Retrieved June 20, 2020.
  16. ^ "Shane Danielson on Hollywood's racist caricatures". the Guardian. September 15, 2007. Retrieved December 13, 2022.
  17. ^ Thank You, Peter Sellers
  18. ^ Datta-Ray, Sunanda K. (2009). Looking East to Look West: Lee Kuan Yew's Mission India. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. p. 10. ISBN 978-981-4279-04-8.
  19. ^ Mehta, Vinod (December 1, 2014). Editor Unplugged: Media, Magnates, Netas and Me. Penguin Books Limited. p. 141. ISBN 978-93-5118-859-9.
  20. ^ Thapar, Romesh (1996). Seminar. R. Thapur. p. 250.
  21. ^ "Picture the song: Bring out the eyeshades for 'Jawani Jaanemann' from 'Namak Halaal'". Scroll.in. July 31, 2017. Retrieved September 9, 2019.
  22. ^ "Travails With The Alien by Satyajit Ray: Review - The Free Press Journal". freepressjournal.in. May 29, 2019.
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