The Party (1968)

The Party is a 1968 comedy film directed by Blake Edwards, starring Peter Sellers and Claudine Longet. The film has a very loose structure, and essentially serves as a series of set pieces for Sellers's improvisational comedy talents. The comedy is based on a fish-out-of-water premise, in which a bungling Indian actor accidentally gets invited to a lavish Hollywood dinner party and "makes terrible mistakes based upon ignorance of Western ways."

The Party is considered a classic comedic cult film. Edwards biographers Peter Lehman and William Luhr said, "The Party may very well be one of the most radically experimental films in Hollywood history; in fact it may be the single most radical film since D.W. Griffith's style came to dominate the American cinema." Film historian Saul Austerlitz wrote, "Despite the offensiveness of Sellers's brownface routine, The Party is one of his very best films... Taking a page from Tati, this is neorealist comedy, purposefully lacking a director's guiding eye: look here, look there. The screen is crammed full of activity, and the audience's eyes are left to wander where they may."

Synopsis

A film crew is making a Gunga Din-style costume epic. Unknown Indian actor Hrundi V. Bakshi (Sellers) plays a bugler, but continues to play even after being shot and after the director (Herbert Ellis) yells "cut." Bakshi later accidentally blows up an enormous fort set rigged with explosives. The director fires Bakshi immediately and calls the studio head, General Fred R. Clutterbuck (J. Edward McKinley), about the mishap. Clutterbuck writes down Bakshi's name to blacklist him, but he inadvertently writes Bakshi's name on the guest list of his wife's upcoming dinner party.

Actors