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Ravi Swami

"The Party", Dir: Blake Edwards, 1968



I have to admit that I have avoided watching the 1968 Blake Edwards, Peter Sellers vehicle "The Party" due in large part to the problematic "black face" performance by Sellers, as "Hrundi S. Bakshi", written as an Indian innocent abroad who finds himself a guest at a Hollywood party due to a blunder by the film producer host's secretary.

The film, partly intended to be a satire on the wilder excesses of Hollywood parties is a backdrop for what are very Jacques Tati-inpired sight gags with Sellers' "Bakshi" at the centre and in turn could be seen to have inspired later cinematic comedy characters like Rowan Atkinson's "Mr Bean".

I watched much of this film either completely straight-faced or scowling at Sellers uneven portrayal of an Indian and while it's true that many of the comedic segments don't make a feature of "Indian-ness", his performance skates very close to derailing any humour as he blunders his way through the party surrounded by the well-heeled, confused and bemused guests, apart from the presence of another "outsider", played by the French-American actress Claudine Longet, as "Michele Monet", a French ingénue actress, who takes a shine to Bakshi.


It would be wrong to say that the film has no funny moments at all and I did find myself laughing at some of the socially embarrassing situations that Bakshi finds himself in, in a film that is all about social embarrassment, and his uneven performance as Bakshi is offset by a few scenes where elements of authenticity creep in, such as one where he is in conversation with the French actress and his Indian accent feels less like a parody and where one can imagine him channeling his experiences in his pre-acting career stationed in India during wartime National Service.


I'm not the biggest fan of Peter Sellers while acknowledging that many consider him one of the greatest comedy talents of the 20th Century and are happy to give him a pass in this film, but I don't think it's his best in films compared to, for example, "Dr Strangelove, "I'm All Right Jack", "The Ladykillers", "The Smallest Show On Earth" or Blake Edward's "Inspector Clouseau" films where his Goonish lunacy is reined in to some extent or where he played supporting characters.


A burgeoning romance between Hrundi and Monet is a little awkwardly played out and before things can take a turn in that area, some other Bakshi created disaster is thrown into the mix and I'm not sure if the baby elephant that suddenly makes an appearance in the third act as the chaos spirals out of control is a suggestion that Seller's problematic "black face" is the "elephant in the room", a possible sly commentary on the fascination with Indian mysticism, Gurus and "Swami's" that permeated Hollywood in the midst of the American Counter Culture revolution of the 1960's. On the subject of "Black Face", it seems as if white actors can't help drifting into broad caricature when given darker than tan make-up, though it's less obvious when white female actors are required to do the same to fulfil a role - there have been some notably good and sympathetic portrayals of Indians, such as by Michael Bates in the BBC comedy series of the 1970's, "It Aint Half Hot Mum" where again Bates was drawing on his wartime experiences in India, but inevitably, watching "The Party" often inspired the worst and borderline offensive imitations by people trying to "do an Indian".


By the end of the film's third act Hrundi and Monet have escaped the mayhem and there is the suggestion that they may be entering into a romance but in comedic terms the film had already lost much of it's momentum and these final scenes feel very flat - Hrundi, after dropping Monet off at her apartment, signs off by saying that he must return home to feed his pet monkey "Apu", something that feels rather like an in-joke at the expense of Indian film director Satyajit Ray's highly regarded "Apu" trilogy.


It's worth pointing out in this context that Ray actually visited the set of "The Party" when he was pursuing Seller's for a lead role in his self-penned, ultimately unmade Hollywood produced science-fiction film "The Alien" and appears to have been devoid of the usual stuffiness of Indians when it comes to Westerners playing them, or perhaps he was just keen to get such a bankable star in his film and seems to have been an admirer of his work, so perhaps the "Apu" line was his suggestion...we'll never know, and it's just another rumour alongside the one that his script was plagiarised by Steven Spielberg for "E.T" a decade or so later.


Seller's career, judging by his Wiki entry, was one full of dramatic peaks and troughs defined by failed marriages and other traumas and "The Party" followed a similar black-face role in "The Millionairess" opposite Sophia Loren almost a decade previously, at a career point where things seemed to be on an up-turn following some box-office disasters.



"The Party", Dir: Blake Edwards, 1968

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