Remain calm, please: 'Pink Panther' is afoot

A new DVD set offers an encyclopedic look

Peter Sellers was the first bumbling Inspector Clouseau.

Just to clear this up, once and for all: There really is no good reason why the series of films collectively known as "The Pink Panther" bears that name.

The beloved comedies starring Peter Sellers as the bumbling Inspector Clouseau have become identified with the name, and with the charming animated title sequences, but the name itself comes from the original "Pink Panther," from 1963. In that film, the Pink Panther is a world-famous diamond whose lone flaw, when viewed in the light, appears to take the shape of a candy-colored feline. Clouseau is not, nor ever would be, the Pink Panther, and yet the name and the character have become inseparable - so much so that four later films all included "Pink Panther" in their titles.

This is worth mentioning to indicate the world of illogic you commit to as soon as you enter the world of the Pink Panther - newly reissued in a lavish DVD set, complete with accompanying "Pink Panther" encyclopedia, from MGM. With that out of the way, shall we begin?

More than the films, it is the accouterments of "The Pink Panther" that are so familiar to most people. The troublemaking animated panther and Henry Mancini's slinky theme summon up a charming sense of sexual and criminal frisson that the films themselves often struggle mightily to match.

Clouseau was a sidebar in the original "Pink Panther," an amusing diversion from the main action. David Niven is Sir Charles Lytton, world-famous ladies' man and possible jewel thief, romancing Pink Panther owner Princess Dala (Claudia Cardinale) as he woos the inspector's wife (Capucine). Clouseau is the unwitting cuckold, amorous and clueless as he tries, and continually fails, to achieve romantic bliss with his wife. He is put off by everything: cold feet, thin blankets, glasses of warm milk, exploding champagne bottles, screechy violins.

As funny as Clouseau gets, he is never as laughable as the purportedly romantic dialogue between Niven and Cardinale, who hardly generate romantic spark sufficient to light a candle. Sellers is not yet buffoonish inept - and his Gallic mangling of the English language is not yet as pronounced as it becomes in the 1970s Pink Panther films.

"The Pink Panther" introduced the world to Clouseau, but it was not until the second film in the series, 1964's "A Shot in the Dark," that the natty French inspector with the gray trench coat and carefully trimmed mustache took center stage. Clouseau (no longer married, and on the prowl) is deadly sober, grim-faced as he approaches the task of investigation.

A man has been murdered at a millionaire's home, and all signs point to housemaid Maria Gambrelli (Elke Sommer) as the killer. The facts of the case hardly matter; all anyone watches for is the wink-wink sexual suggestiveness (now rather dated) and Sellers's remarkable physical gifts. Director Blake Edwards (who has made all the "Pink Panther" films) has shifted gears here, from thriller with shades of sex farce to out-and-out comedy with a tinge of sex farce. Clouseau, who always seemed extraneous to "The Pink Panther" (or maybe it was everyone else who was out of place?), now has a scenario pegged to his strong suits.

Clouseau fancies himself Hercule Poirot but is actually more Mister Hulot - a brilliant klutz masquerading as a great detective. His dignity never flags, though, whether he has just exited a taxi directly into a fountain, loudly slurped the ink from a pen, or torn up the felt on an elegant pool table. "I examine the facts," he loudly announces to a roomful of potential suspects, pontificating about his crime-solving method as he remains blissfully oblivious to the dollop of skin cream on his nose. "Give me 10 men like Clouseau," his nemesis, the increasingly unhinged Inspector Dreyfus (Herbert Lom), mutters to himself, "and I could destroy the world."

Anticipating Mike Myers's Austin Powers, Sellers's Clouseau is a master of the absurdist catchphrase. "This is my pistol-pen! Get your own pistol-pen!" "You fool, you've broken my pointing-stick! I've nothing to point with!"

"It's a good job I was able to check my reflexes," he sputters at an underling after stumbling over him. "I might have killed you with a karate chop!" he shouts, his hand frozen in mid-whack.

Sellers and Edwards took an 11-year hiatus from Clouseau, but the desire for a surefire hit brought the Sûreté's best-known investigator back for another three cases. The holiday-romantic mood of the first two films gave way to an international-crime travelogue, as if Clouseau were a significantly less suave James Bond. The plot of "Return of the Pink Panther" makes even less sense than the average Bond thriller, with the theft of the fabled Pink Panther diamond (there it goes again!) dragging back Sir Charles (with Christopher Plummer replacing Niven) and his wife Lady Lytton (Catherine Schell) into a murky world of double- and triple-crossing.

During his sabbatical, Clouseau has grown even more exaggerated, and a little predictable; the slow-motion fights with his houseboy Cato (Burt Kwouk) take on a familiar air by the time they have been trotted out for the third and fourth time. Sellers is waxy of pallor, and his energy has noticeably flagged since the last Clouseau outing, but his ability to provoke helpless fits of laughter is undiminished - and the proof is in the final print of the film. In a nightclub scene, where Clouseau is posing as a lounge lizard in an ear-piercingly loud red sports coat and mutton-chop sideburns, co-star Schell erupts in uncontrollable hysterics, sputtering into her drink, when Sellers toasts her: "Here's looking at you, kid."

It's unclear what it says about "Return" that Edwards left this scene in. Is the film charmingly shambling or in dire need of a better editor?

By 1976's "The Pink Panther Strikes Again," Clouseau is less buffoon than magical idiot, a precursor to Sellers's Chauncey Gardner in "Being There." Clouseau's hair is now carrot-colored, and his trench coat has been matched with a herringbone fedora, but his mangling of English consonant sounds has remained. "Robber" comes out as "ghebber," and "challenge" is "sha-longe." The Bond allusions are now explicit, with Lom's Inspector Dreyfus now playing the villain to Clouseau's inept 007. Clouseau has ascended to the realm of holy fool, not only protected from harm but assured, in all instances, of ultimate triumph.

"Diminishing returns" would be too kind a description of the remaining films in the series, with 1982's posthumous "Trail of the Pink Panther," composed of stray remaining bits of Clouseau, particularly, ghoulishly egregious. The "Pink Panther" brand, however, remains evergreen, with Steve Martin having replaced Sellers as Clouseau in a 2006 remake (also included in the box set), and a forthcoming sequel. Funny as he might be, Martin is no sha-longe to Sellers.

Sellers may have been spotty, but we prefer to remember him at his ingenious best. Watching these wildly inconsistent films prompts us to paste together our own mental highlight reels of the brilliant Sellers. When you hold "The Pink Panther" series up to the light, the rest just disappears.