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Review: After two (highly successful) appearances as bumbling Inspector Clouseau, Italian director Vittorio De Sica ('Joe' in THE MILLIONAIRESS) wanted to have a go at utilizing Peter Sellers' characters and manic accents. In his AFTER THE FOX (1966) criminal mastermind Aldo Vanucci (Sellers) escapes from gaol to save his film-starlet sister's honour (then, his soon wife-to-be Britt Ekland) and con an entire coastal village, police and all, into 'featuring' in the film he is shooting as cover for landing the loot - the 'film' is even called The Gold Of Cairo. De Sica was not averse to parodying mankind's often-misplaced reverence of film people, and its delight in 'starring' in a feature film ... losing all sense of proportion in the process! Or of sending-up the arty emptiness perceived of Italian cinema (the exultant film-critic during the trial!). One can easily be forgiven for assuming this was a Blake Edwards film, however, so the real success of De Sica's film was Victor Mature as a fading beefcake star, sending-up his own image. But Blake Edwards wanted Sellers back. For who better to wreck both an expensive film set (the fort!) and a lavish Hollywood society party than Peter Sellers as the Bengali actor Hrundi V Bakshi (reprising his accent that enraptured Sophia Loren in THE MILLIONAIRESS) ...?!! The result is a - to many, however - long-winded, one-joke idea in the two-reeler style of silent film comedy, with Sellers' hapless character accidentally invited to an overly-lavish Hollywood producer's party (oh the sheer over-the-top opulence of it all: interior watercourses, split-levels, extensive P/A systems, Russian dance troupe ...) with seriously-overdressed wealthy people and nicely-underdressed budding starlets. Slowly, inadvertently but surely, Hrundi V Bakshi proceeds to dismantle the party's structural integrity in a series of Buster Keaton-like and Jacques Tatiesque (Monsieur Hulot's swing-door!) set-piece sketches. Nevertheless, there are many hilarious moments. Who, at some time or other, hasn't uttered those deliciously-accented phrases, "Num-num ... Birdie num-nums ..." and "Howdy par-ten-er ...?!!" "Sir, your wife has fallen in the water ..."
"... Save her jewels ..." The toilet-paper unrolling. The lavatory flooding. The band playing on as they are engulfed by the foam. And Steve Franken as Levinson, the put-upon and increasingly inebriated waiter who eventually finds love from a kindred soul beneath the bubbles and foam ... Excellent stuff! |
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