Movie Review: Lolita (1962)

A story of hebephilia as recounted by the predator, Lolita walks a fine line in creating a credibly monstrous man and surrounding him with competing carnal impulses.

In a prologue, college teacher Humbert Humbert (James Mason) invades the home of filmmaker Clare Quilty (Peter Sellers). The two men engage in an argument, Humbert accusing Quilty of ruining his life before shooting him dead.

In flashback to four years prior, divorced writer Humbert arrives from Europe to the New Hampshire boarding house of widow Charlotte Haze (Shelley Winters), where he plans to spend the summer before starting a teaching job in Ohio. Charlotte immediately sets her eyes on Humbert, but he prefers younger lovers and is smitten by her teenaged daughter Dolores, nicknamed Lolita (Sue Lyon). He endures Charlotte's obvious advances while writing scandalous fantasies in his diary about her daughter.

Lolita herself is rebelling against her mother and interested in seducing Humbert as well as enjoying the company of other boys. Charlotte senses her daughter is a threat and sends her off to summer camp. Humbert marries Charlotte as a convenient ruse to stay close to Lolita, but soon realizes he cannot tolerate his new wife. She discovers his diary, setting off events that allow Humbert and Lolita to indulge their lust while he attempts to control every aspect of her life.

Directed by Stanley Kubrick from an initial script treatment by Russian author Vladimir Nabokov adapting his own 1955 novel, Lolita's remarkable achievement is that the film got made at all, given the cinematic constraints of 1962. Kubrick threads the needle by casting newcomer Sue Lyon (15 years old by the time filming wrapped; the novel's Lolita is 12), never mentioning the girl's age, and using whispers and innuendo to set up the central seductions and fading to black at just the right moments.

The story tackles issues of lust, obsession, jealousy, possession and layers of lying. Humbert is the narrator, and the enigma created by Nabokov resides in the natural willingness to sympathize with a storyteller who in this case is preying on a young adolescent. Kubrick elicits a perfect performance out of James Mason, the actor finding the creepiness in Humbert's sick pursuit of Lolita, his obsession emanating from a rotten core and eating away at his soul. The thin strands of sympathy are woven out of Lolita's willingness to engage as a seductress herself, and gradual revelations of other twisted agendas.

The character of Clare Quilty is expanded from the book, and riding on an unforgettable Peter Sellers performance the slimy artist/filmmaker emerges as the dark Humbert's even darker double. A combination of guilty conscience, dogged rival and sinister shadow, Quilty appears at key moments to engage with Humbert, offering opportunities to pause and retreat or dive deeper into the moral abyss.

Despite the rich content, the running length of 152 minutes is excessive. After the initial pursuit and seduction, the second half sags into the slow motion wreckage of a mutually destructive relationship, Humbert's incessant determination to control Lolita blinding him to his emotional downfall. Kubrick prolongs a few scenes longer than needed, and some of the shouting matches descend into tiresome theatricality.

Confronted by Mason and Sellers in fine form, Shelley Winters and Sue Lyon hold their own. Winters as Charlotte oozes desperation to find her man, throwing herself physically and emotionally at a stranger she knows nothing about. Lyon is a revelation, her Lolita standing up to all the adults in the room, strategically advancing and retreating as she schemes her way to some form of salvation.

An exploration of insidious functional derangement, Lolita is thought provoking, disturbing and fascinating.

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Movie Review: The Millionairess (1960)

A stupifyingly lame comedy, The Millionairess cannot be saved, despite Sophia Loren's gleaming presence in a succession of stunning outfits and various stages of undress.

In London, Epifania (Loren) inherits the business empire of her father upon his death. The will also sets a condition: any future man she wants to marry needs to first turn £500 into £15,000 within three months. Despite her lawyer Sagamore (Alastair Sim) keeping a watchful eye, Epifania tries to get around her father's wishes and marries a good-for-nothing playboy, but he promptly starts cheating on her. Close to despair Epifania tries to kill herself.

Eventually she sets eyes on the humble and good-hearted doctor Kabir (Peter Sellers), who provides his medical care services at a ramshackle clinic dedicated to the poor. Epifania tries all she knows to seduce Kabir, but he is not interested in her nor her money. For all her wealth, comely charms and capitalistic smarts, she cannot get Kabir to fall in love with her. Eventually Epifania learns that Kabir's late mother set a condition on any woman he may want to marry: to start with just £35 and live independently for three months. Epifania accepts the challenge, but finding true love will still not be easy.

An adaptation of a George Bernard Shaw play from 1936, The Millionairess is extraordinarily dull. Director Anthony Asquith delivers an inept, listless film which never engages, and indeed creates a sense of stultifying boredom. The plot never comes close to registering as a genuine story worth investing in, and the comic elements are simply limp. There is no on-screen chemistry between Sellers and Loren, and the whole concept of Epifania falling in love with Kabir for no good reason is beyond bewildering.

The film burns scene after scene with Epifania attempting to convince Kabir that he should love her, the repetition reaching absurd levels and sucking any modicum of life out of the film. The lawyer Sagamore emerges as the sharpest character but even he cannot save the pacing, while the inconsequential late introduction of a doofus drunk professor (Noell Purcell) makes things much worse. Smatterings of dialogue about capitalism and socialism are stranded in the intellectual desert, while the theme of financial challenges set by dead parents for spouses-to-be is overplayed to distraction.

The one reason to suffer through The Millionairess is a ravishing Sophia Loren at her most alluring, and Asquith places her in a series of fetching outfits and finds plenty of contrived reasons to get her to partially undress. It's all satisfyingly risqué by 1960 standards, and Loren, at the height of her fame and glamour, radiates star power. Sellers, by way of contrast, seems mesmerized by his co-star and never gets to grips with his character, an Indian immigrant doctor thunderstruck by love but doggedly sticking to principles of poverty.

Loren as The Millionairess looks the part, but the film is otherwise bankrupt.

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Movie Review: The Party (1968)

A comedy poking fun at the Hollywood elite through the eyes of an outsider, The Party is a wild laugh fest.

Hrundi Bakshi (Peter Sellers) is an error-prone simpleton of a man, somehow hired as an actor on the grand set of a Hollywood historical adventure epic being filmed on location. Through his bumbling Bakshi manages to repeatedly disrupt filming, and he then mistakenly destroys the entire set. Studio head Fred Clutterbuck (J. Edward McKinley) vows that Bakshi will never again work in the film industry, but the actor's name erroneously ends up on the invite list for Clutterbuck's latest social gathering at his swish house.

From the moment that Bakshi arrives at the party, everything that can possibly go wrong does so. Within the sleek rooms and hallways of Clutterbuck's modern house, Bakshi loses his shoe, inadvertently insults the guests, disrupts the sit-down dinner, and manages to push every wrong button on the complicated electronic home control panel. He endures misadventures with caviar and an exceedingly uncomfortable quest to find a usable bathroom. Also at the party is aspiring starlet Michele Monet (Claudine Longet), who is escorted by boorish producer C.S. Divot (Gavin MacLeod). Feeling like an outsider, Michele is the only person to try and connect with Bakshi, and as the evening progresses from disastrous to catastrophic, they develop an unlikely friendship.

Produced, directed and co-written by Blake Edwards, The Party endures as a classic example of pure farce. The film sets out to place Bakshi in every awkward situation possible, and thanks to Sellers' extraordinary ability to portray a man desperately trying to conceal his physical and emotional discomfort, the laughs keep coming.

The film is a study in effective minimalist comedy built on a single premise. After the opening film-within-a-film scene, almost the entire running time is invested in the one location, with Bakshi as the outsider trying all he knows to fit into a context filled with people he does not know partaking in social norms he knows nothing about. There is minimal dialogue, plenty of background chatter, and a never ending stream of old-fashioned situational comedy.

Some jokes, of course, run too long. The waiter Levinson (Steven Franken) cannot resist a drink and gradually descends into a state of abject drunkenness, and his mishaps occasionally threaten to take the focus away from Bakshi. The search for the bathroom is also dragged beyond its capacity to sustain laughs, although once Bakshi does find an unoccupied bathroom, Edwards hits his stride to deliver an epic sequence of silent disaster.

The highlights are many, and include the entire on-location opening sequence, Edwards bravely staking his territory by extending the introductory laughs to the riotous stage. Later there is a flying chicken during dinner, a Birdie Num Num pet, and finally a young elephant and bucket loads of soap to put an end to the evening.

Embedded in the merriment is Edwards' drive to poke fun at his industry. Bakshi is undoubtedly a dimwitted misfit, but he possesses a pure and honest soul. As the night turns into day, Edwards reveals that some other guests at the party are also morons but in maybe less apparent ways (Divot wants to take advantage of Michele more than he wants to help her), or they may be smart but soulless (Clutterbuck cares more about his paintings and less about his wife).

It takes all kinds to make a bash come to life, and if nothing else, Hrundi Bakshi will go home with the same genuine smile on his face as when he arrived at The Party.

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The Movies Of Peter Sellers

All movies starring Peter Sellers and reviewed on the Ace Black Blog are linked below:

The Millionairess (1960)

Lolita (1962)

The Pink Panther (1963)

Dr. Strangelove (1964)

The Party (1968)

Murder By Death (1976)

Being There (1979)

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The Index of Movie Stars is here.

Movie Review: Murder By Death (1976)

A whodunit comedy satire, Murder By Death offers laughs aplenty but also runs out of ideas rather quickly.

The world's best detectives are invited to a spooky mansion for an evening of dinner and death. The detectives include Sidney Wang (modeled on Charlie Chan, and played by Peter Sellers), Dick and Dora Charleston (Nick and Nora Charles, brought to life by David Niven and Maggie Smith), Milo Perrier (Hercule Poirot, portrayed by James Coco), Sam Diamond (representing Sam Spade, played by Peter Falk) and Jessica Marbles (Miss Marple, interpreted by Elsa Lanchester). They need to overcome a rickety bridge and falling gargoyles just to make it into the mansion, where they are greeted by the blind butler Jamesir Bensonmum (Alec Guinness). Deaf-mute maid Yetta (Nancy Walker) is supposed to be helping to get dinner ready.

Their host is erratic millionaire Lionel Twain (Truman Capote), who promises them that one person in the mansion will be dead by midnight, and offers a reward of $1 million to whichever detective can solve the crime. In fact, by the time midnight rolls around two people appear to be dead, the rooms of the mansion are playing tricks of their own, and deep dark personal secrets about all the guests will soon be revealed. The detectives not only have to solve the crimes, but also fight to stay alive as they all come under personal attack.

Written by Neil Simon and directed by Ray Stark, Murder By Death is a good idea with mediocre execution. Making fun of the Agatha Christie-style detective genre is a promising premise, and the gathering of great minds in a stormy mansion to match wits with an evil schemer does set the stage for plenty of zingers, one-liners, and obvious convolutions. The great cast, spooky mansion setting and a clear sense of lighthearted self-depreciation create an agreeably entertaining film.

But the momentum only goes so far, and Simon surprisingly seems to have trouble developing the concept. The running time is about 90 minutes, and the first 30 minutes are fully occupied with the detectives arriving at the mansion. They all encounter the bridge, they all encounter the falling gargoyles, and they all encounter the blind butler, in what amounts to dullness by prolonged repetition. The remaining hour has an unexpectedly high number of flat patches. Too much time is invested in a limited number of gags, for example opening and closing the dining room door to find the room alternatively full and empty. This seems to go on forever and is repeated ad nauseam (and never properly explained).

To tide over the rough patches, there are jokes aplenty to keep things sort of humming along. Alec Guinness as a haplessly blind butler generates the most laughs. Peter Sellers mangling the English language with his eastern morsels of faux wisdom and trite traditional sayings adds plenty of fine comic timing. Peter Falk goes all-in as hard-boiled detective Sam Diamond. Less successful is James Coco as the food-obsessed Perrier, while Elsa Lanchester as Jessica Marbles is under-written. The cast also includes Richard Narita as Wang's adopted son, Eileen Brennan as Diamond's assistant, and James Cromwell as Perrier's driver.

Simon navigates the story towards his punchline, poking fun at detective stories that reveal key information in the frantic last few pages simply to try and outwit the audience. He probably carries that joke too far, as the rushed ending disintegrates into a muddled anti-climax of anything goes.

Murder By Death is a passable satire, and at the end, the butler maybe did it. Or maybe not.

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Movie Review: Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb (1964)

A black comedy imagining a hot end to the cold war, Dr. Strangelove is a caustic epic. Through the story of a rogue American general launching an unprovoked nuclear strike on the Soviet Union, Stanley Kubrick deliciously dismembers the culture of war, exposing the infantile incompetence of generals and their politicians.

President Muffley: Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!

General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) gives orders for a group of nuclear bombers under his command to attack targets in the Soviet Union. Major T. J. Kong (Slim Pickens), a commander of one of the bombers, receives the orders, confirms them, and sets off to drop his nuclear payload on the target assigned for his B-52. Captain Lionel Mandrake (Peter Sellers), a British exchange officer and Ripper's second in command, realizes too late that Ripper has gone mad and is bent on starting a global nuclear war.

General Ripper: I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

Once the magnitude of the crisis becomes clear, US President Merkin Muffley (Sellers again) convenes his advisers in the War Room, where a large wall screen shows the real-time progress of the bombers as they approach their targets. General Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott) is a warmonger who would like to seize the opportunity and launch an all out war. Dr. Strangelove (Sellers once again), a wheelchair-bound nuclear scientist and a former Nazi with a gloved and occasionally out of control right arm, informs the President that the Soviets have an unstoppable "doomsday machine" that will automatically detonate and destroy the planet if the Soviets are attacked. With the Americans helping the Soviets to destroy the incoming bombers, and American troops frantically attacking Ripper's base to seize the recall code, Major Kong has to evade enemy fire and stoically make his way towards his target.

President Muffley, discussing Ripper with Turgidson: There's nothing to figure out, General Turgidson. This man is obviously a psychotic.
General Turgidson: We-he-ell, uh, I'd like to hold off judgment on a thing like that, sir, until all the facts are in.

Dr. Strangelove is 90 sharp and hilarious minutes of biting satire. Based on the book Red Alert by Peter George, the film is filled with classic moments as Kubrick takes every opportunity to peel back and crumple the pompous absurdity of war and the men who wage it. Filmed in black with just some white, Kubrick and cinematographer Gilbert Taylor provide the movie with a shiny darkness, whether inside the cavernous war room or on board Kong's claustrophobic bomber. The world is about to be destroyed from decision rooms painted black, filled with shiny equipment, indirect light and men who look good making all the wrong decisions. The opening credit sequence, with beautiful music accompanying war machinery, sets the scene, while Vera Lynn's poignant Second World War song We'll Meet Again is an ode to a planet on the verge of self-destruction.


President Muffley, speaking to the Soviet Premier: I'm sorry too, Dmitri. I'm very sorry. All right, you're sorrier than I am. But I am sorry as well. I am as sorry as you are, Dmitri. Don't say that you're the more sorry than I am because I am capable of being just as sorry as you are. So we're both sorry, all right? All right.

The performances are uniformly pitch perfect, twisted comedy delivered with a straight face. Peter Sellers' three roles triangulate soldier, politician and weapons expert. Mandrake is a man in uniform swept up by events he has no control over, Muffley is the president who approved the command system that allowed Ripper to go rogue and now has to deal with the resulting mess, while Strangelove is the mad (in many ways) weapons scientist, almost gleeful that his nuclear industry is again and finally being used in anger. That he is also an ex-Nazi and not in control of his own rampaging right arm layers on commentary about the inner circle trusted to advise on matters of war. And yes, humanity's love of deadly conflict is, indeed, strange.

Dr. Strangelove: The whole point of the doomsday machine...is lost if you keep it a secret!

George C. Scott as General Buck Turgidson inflates the warmongering general stereotype to fill the war room with his breathless anti-commie rhetoric, whipping himself up into a bloodthirsty frenzy. For Turgidson, acceptable casualties are calculated with a margin of error in the tens of millions, and it's all a victory as long as the enemy's losses are greater. Slim Pickens is a cowboy in the sky as Major Kong, and despite his eccentricities Kong is faithful to his orders, skilled in leading his crew, determined to fulfil his mission, and willing to go to extremes to ensure its success.

War is hell, and it's also ridiculous. Dr. Strangelove takes aim and riddles its target with a barrage of piercing mockery.

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Movie Review: The Pink Panther (1963)

An attempt at suave comedy, The Pink Panther is a plodding, mostly unfunny farce. A caper involving the attempted theft of a large diamond quickly skids off the road into antiquated flat jokes and an unconvincing romance.

At an exclusive ski resort in Europe, expert jewel thief Sir Charles Lytton (David Niven), better known as The Phantom, has set his sights on stealing the famous and massive Pink Panther diamond owned by the deposed Princess Dala (Claudia Cardinale). The diamond has a flaw that resembles the image of a panther, but is nevertheless worth a fortune. Sir Charles gets close to his target by attempting to romance the Princess.

Also at the resort is inept French Inspector Jacques Clouseau (Peter Sellers), tasked with putting an end to the Phantom's crime spree. A bungling idiot, Clouseau's speciality is walking into fixed objects and knocking things over, mostly himself. Clouseau's wife Simone (Capucine) is The Phantom's silent partner and lover, helping to plan and pull off the thefts. With Sir Charles' nephew George (Robert Wagner) making a surprise appearance and adding to the reigning chaos and raging lust, the theft of the Pink Panther will not be an easy task.

The Pink Panther climaxes with a wild costume party, a favourite plot device for director Blake Edwards, with various cast members decked out as gorillas or knights in clunky armour, and blundering attempts to break into a safe and steal the diamond. Earlier, there is an interminable scene with Sir Charles and his nephew George simultaneously caught in Simone's hotel room and having to hide under the bed and in the bathtub as Inspector Clouseau unexpectedly barges in on his wife. It's all supposed to be hilarious, but the script by Edwards and Maurice Richlin causes the odd chuckle at best. The timing is slow, the actions and dialogue a lot more dull than smart, and the shenanigans contrived rather than calculating.

The romance between Sir Charles and Princess Dala is warmed-over rather than spicy, with Niven and Cardinale unable to generate meaningful heat. The bed-hopping escapades centred on George are best described as infantile, Robert Wagner never appearing sure as to his role in the movie.

Peter Sellers as Clouseau induces the most sympathy and a few good laughs, but tripping over every conceivable object gets old fast. In his first movie appearance, Clouseau is missing the supremely bloated self-importance that would become key to his character in future outings. Here, Clouseau is just a dim police inspector seemingly unable to stay on his feet, and wrapped tightly around the finger of his devious wife.

The humour and the romance may be flat, but at least the Henry Mancini score brings some stylish respect to the film. As the actors fall all over themselves, the gracefully drawn panther sneaks his way to fame, moving to a magically languid tune.

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Movie Review: Being There (1979)

A biting satire about the blank intellect that passes for political discourse, Being There was clever in its time but more prescient than even writer Jerzy Kosinski could have imagined. Since 1979, the game of politics has become ever more about the meaningless slogan and the trivial soundbite. It turns out that Chauncey Gardiner wasn't mocking politicians: he was foreshadowing what they would increasingly become.

Chance (Peter Sellers), the elderly gardener at a nondescript house on the tough side of Washington DC, appears to have been born in the house and never stepped foot outside it. His only human contact is the maid, who brings him his meals. Otherwise, Chance watches television, tends to the garden and has little human contact.

When the home's owner dies, the house is closed up and Chance is forced to leave, facing the world for the first time. Impeccably dressed but aimlessly wandering the streets, Chance is accidentally bumped by the limousine of Eve Rand (Shirley MacLaine). She misinterprets his name as Chauncey Gardiner, and takes him to her estate for treatment: Eve is the wife of the ailing Ben Rand (Melvyn Douglas), one of DC's most powerful back-room political king-makers. Ben takes an immediate liking to Chauncey, whose slow speech and deliberate mannerisms are mistaken for a deep intellect.

Ben introduces Chauncey to the President of the United States (Jack Warden), who quotes on national television Gardiner's trite homilies about managing the national economy being the same as tending to a garden. As Eve finds herself hopelessly attracted to the mysterious Chauncey, a storm of publicity is unleashed with the media, national leaders and international diplomats scrambling to cozy up to the man who appears to have no background but enormous power and insight.

In his penultimate film role, Peter Sellers reminded audiences that his acting skills extended well beyond the superficial laughs of the Pink Panther movies. His Chauncey Gardiner is all about a vacuous adult applying artificially learned behaviour in a magnificently controlled performance, the gaps between action and reaction speaking volumes more than anything he says. The ease with which ignorance is mistaken for wisdom is a tribute to Sellers never betraying Chauncey's roots, but providing him with just enough survival skills and then letting others reach their own conclusions. A cast of veteran white men, including Douglas, Warden, Richard Basehart and Richard Dysart throw their own sharp darts at Washington DC, where macho posturing has barely progressed from the days of the musket.

Shirley MacLaine doesn't spare the women of DC from Being There's raging satire, her Eve Rand falling hard for Chauncey simply because he is mostly silent and mysterious, and Eve doesn't bother to explore if his mystery is a result of abject stupidity or searing genius. In her efforts to gain Chauncey's attention, MacLaine delivers a memorably comic self-fulfilment scene that matches Meg Ryan's deli theatrics in When Harry Met Sally...

Hal Ashby exposes all that Washington DC has to offer, starting Chauncey's journey on the gritty side of town before transporting him to a world of lavish luxury in the Rand mansion. Ashby keeps the film's focus rightfully on Sellers, drawing a performance that was deservedly nominated for an Academy Award.

Being There holds up a mirror to the power elite and reflects a self-obsessed monster consuming itself with all the wrong priorities. With the passage of time, the mirror has also proved to be a crystal ball.

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