The characterisations of Dreyfus and Clouseau are wonderful in this film. Watching Dreyfus descend into total madness is one of the all time greatest comic performances. Sellers is wonderful playing off of Lom, in such great segments as the 'hallucinatory dentist' and the 'hunchback and the bomber' scenes. This film is much less subtle than ‘A Shot in the Dark’, but what it loses in subtlety, it gains in situational humour unrivalled in any other comedy
Sellers must be regarded as, if not ‘the’, then at least one of the funniest actors ever to grace the silver screen. There was no end to the ways he could make you laugh; from the subtlest expression, an eye averted or perhaps the slight raising of an eyebrow, to the broadest slapstick, it was all within his personal domain, and he was the Master.
Physically, practically all he had to do to get a laugh was show up; consider the scene in which he arrives at the hospital to visit Dreyfus: As he saunters across the lawn of the vast grounds surrounding the buildings, a croquet mallet and ball lying to one side catches his eye; there is just the slightest hesitation in his step, the subtlest change of expression in his eyes and the merest inclination of the head. And there, in that briefest of moments upon the screen, you know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, what is about to transpire.
This page is dedicated to Dr R.H.Wilson (no he's not dead)
