Pink Panther Series

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The Pink Panther series is the name given to the American films that have been made since 1963 and have the Paris police inspector Jacques Clouseau as the main character. Clouseau, invented as a character by director Blake Edwards , was originally played by Peter Sellers .

The movies

A total of eleven films were made between 1963 and 2008, of which, however, only the five films made during the lifetime of Peter Sellers and Blake Edwards are considered "official" Pink Panther films . In 1980, while the film The Romance of the Pink Panther was still in the works and filming hadn't started, Peter Sellers died of a heart attack . Two years later, Blake Edwards put together the last semi-official Pink Panther film from old, unused scenes and turned it into the comedy The Pink Panther Is Hunted .

No. year title Director Jacques Clouseau Remarks
1 1963 The Pink Panther
(The Pink Panther) 		Blake Edwards Peter Sellers Inspector Clouseau here as a minor character
2 1964 A Shot in the Dark
(A Shot in the Dark) 		Blake Edwards Peter Sellers First appearance of Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfus ( Herbert Lom ) and servant Cato ( Burt Kwouk )
3 1968 Inspector Clouseau
(Inspector Clouseau) 		Bud Yorkin Alan Arkin out of sequence, with (apart from Clouseau) other figures
4th 1975 The Return of the Pink Panther
(The Return of the Pink Panther) 		Blake Edwards Peter Sellers Christopher Plummer takes on the role of David Niven as Sir Charles Lytton
5 1976 Inspector Clouseau, the "best" man at Interpol
(The Pink Panther Strikes Again) 		Blake Edwards Peter Sellers
6th 1978 Inspector Clouseau - The crazy Flic with the hot look
(Revenge of the Pink Panther) 		Blake Edwards Peter Sellers
7th 1982 The Pink Panther is hunted
(Trail of the Pink Panther) 		Blake Edwards Peter Sellers Scenes with Peter Sellers created from archive material
8th 1983 Curse of the Pink Panther
(Curse of the Pink Panther) 		Blake Edwards Roger Moore Roger Moore plays Inspector Clouseau (after facial surgery) in a supporting role
9 1993 Son of the Pink Panther
(Son of the Pink Panther) 		Blake Edwards - Roberto Benigni plays the son of Jacques Clouseau
10 2006 The Pink Panther
(The Pink Panther) 		Shawn Levy Steve Martin Formally a prequel of A Shot in the Dark , but without historical reference to time
11 2009 The Pink Panther 2
(The Pink Panther 2) 		Harald Zwart Steve Martin Continuing the 2006 film, John Cleese takes on the role of Chief Inspector Dreyfus from Kevin Kline

Inspector Jacques Clouseau

Jacques Clouseau was originally a tragicomic supporting character portrayed by Peter Sellers in the film Der Rosarote Panther (1963) , directed by Blake Edwards , which later became the main character in the Pink Panther series. By 1978 five films with Peter Sellers and outside the official series a film with Alan Arkin as Clouseau were made. In reality, however, only Sellers were identified with this figure.

Career

In the first film, The Pink Panther , Inspector Jacques Clouseau from the Paris Sûreté nationale chases the master thief, the “phantom”. It seems that the “phantom” is targeting a huge diamond, the “pink panther”. Clouseau suspects Sir Charles Lytton, who is considered impeccable, to be behind the “phantom”. After all sorts of entanglements and outrageous chases, Clouseau ends up in prison himself as a supposed thief.

Clouseau was not the "star" in this film (but David Niven in the role of the "phantom"), but he had the sympathy of the audience on his side. In an effort to do everything right and with the utmost precision, he only creates chaos and steers straight into the next catastrophe, even in the most straightforward situations.

Due to the great success of the role, a sequel followed the following year, which was tailored entirely to the character of the inspector. In A Shot in the Dark (1964), Clouseau resolves a murder case in a country house with many suspects, modeled on Agatha Christie .

The template was a successful Broadway crime play, for which Peter Sellers was hired to film. Mortally unhappy with the upcoming filming, Sellers turned to Blake Edwards and asked him to direct. He only wanted to accept if the producers allowed them to make a Clouseau film out of it. They agreed and the script was completely redesigned. Further sequels were not planned at that time.

In this film, Clouseau's superior was introduced, who is constantly near a nervous breakdown, Chief Inspector Dreyfus ( Herbert Lom ). In addition, Clouseau's servant and "combat training partner" Cato ( Burt Kwouk ) appears for the first time . Cato is based on Kato, the servant and sidekick of the US radio series hero Green Hornet from the 1930s. In Inspector Clouseau - The crazy Flic with the hot eye there is a further allusion to "Green Hornet": Clouseau's car, called "Silver Hornet", is a Citroën 2CV with oversized tail fins that disintegrates into its individual parts after a few meters of driving.

1968 played Alan Arkin to Inspector Clouseau , directed by Bud Yorkin . However, the film did not have the usual success. It was not until 1975 and 1978 that three more Pink Panther films were made in the Edwards / Sellers constellation. The pattern of the first two successful films was taken up again: Clouseau regularly causes chaos and hopeless confusion in the fight against crime - but in the end manages to solve the case by chaining together impossible coincidences.

In 1980 Sellers died, but Clouseau did not. The Clouseau scenes in the 1982 film The Pink Panther is Hunted consist largely of archive recordings that were not previously used. In 1983 Clouseau even reappears in person, in the curse of the pink panther . He underwent facial surgery and is now portrayed by Roger Moore .

In 2004 an attempt was made to translate the figure into the present. Clouseau's role in The Pink Panther (2006) was taken on by Steve Martin . It is an independent story, which is located in Clouseau's Vita around the time between The Pink Panther (1963) and A shot in the dark .

Private information about the figure Clouseau

According to the information in The Pink Panther Is Hunted , Jacques Clouseau was born on September 8, 1920. His father, a winemaker, owned the Château Clouseau à Lamarque. Clouseau attended university at the age of 18. He joined the French resistance movement when the Germans occupied France in 1940. After the Second World War he became a police officer.

By the time Jacques Clouseau was solving his first case in 1963, he was married to Simone Clouseau (played by Capucine ). In May 1964, Simone divorced her husband and the following year she married the man of her dreams, Sir Charles Lytton. Also in 1964, Clouseau flirted violently with the main suspect Maria Gambrelli ( Elke Sommer ) while investigating his next case (A Shot in the Dark ).

In the 1976 film Inspector Clouseau, the “best” man at Interpol , we learn that Jacques Clouseau has been with the Sûreté Nationale in Paris for nine years . During his service, he was awarded twice for his bravery (the pink panther is hunted).

1982 Clouseau disappears without a trace during the ongoing investigation into the theft of the Pink Panther; The story is resolved in the 1983 film The Curse of the Pink Panther : Clouseau had fallen in love with Countess Chandra, who had initiated the theft of the diamond, and stayed with her after a facial operation. His future path is uncertain.

In 1993 The Son of the Pink Panther is filmed, in which Roberto Benigni plays the first appearing son of Jacques Clouseau , Jacques Gambrelli, who emerged from the liaison with Maria Gambrelli in A Shot in the Dark .

Other people appearing several times

The makers

Inventor and Director: Blake Edwards

Scriptwriters: Blake Edwards , Tony Adams , Frank Waldman , Tom Waldman

Music: Henry Mancini

Awards

Oscar

Golden Globe

Golden Raspberry

Others

  • In the opening credits of the first film, a drawn pink panther appeared, with which the animated series The Pink Panther was created. The nameless inspector in it is modeled on Peter Sellers in his role as Jacques Clouseau.
  • The members of an international burglar gang call themselves the Pink Panthers . The gang first attracted attention in 1993; after stealing a £ 500,000 diamond from a jewelry store in central London , she was nicknamed the "Pink Panthers".

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Phil Hardy: The BFI companion to crime . Berkeley & Los Angeles, p. 260
  2. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEFfISdA8LQ