The Party
United States
1968
99 Min
Color
2.35:1
Italian, English
Synopsis
An Indian actor screws up royally during the filming of a costume epic. When the ‘Fire this guy’ list gets confused with the studio head’s guest list for a party, he appears there and everyone assumes he must belong. A great many sight gags and misunderstanding gags are played out at the party where the rest of the film takes place. —IMDb
Director
Blake Edwards
Blake Edwards’ stepfather’s father J. Gordon Edwards was a silent screen director, and his stepfather Jack McEdwards was a stage director and movie production manager. Blake acted in a number films, beginning with Ten Gentlemen from West Point (1942) and wrote a number of others, beginning with Panhandle (1948) and including six for director Richard Quine. He created the popular TV series “Peter Gunn” (1958), “Mr. Lucky” (1959) and “Dante” (1960). He directed a diverse body of films, from comedies to dramas to war films to westerns, including such pictures as Operation Petticoat (1959), Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), Experiment in Terror (1962), Days of Wine and Roses (1962), The Pink Panther (1963) and A Shot in the Dark (1964). After The Great Race (1965) he began fighting with studios. In England he surfaced again with The Return of the Pink Panther (1975), then went back to Hollywood and a real hit, 10 (1979). Victor Victoria (1982) won him French and Italian awards for Best Foreign… read more
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ruby stevens
14Jan12
so offensive i've never managed to sit through it. can i really be the only person who feels this way??
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saptarshi
23Jan12
yeah it's interesting, because a lot of fairly intelligent people give him a pass saying "We did not mind because he spoke the language and something about him was okay in the way that it was okay for Peter Sellers to do it in The Party7. It was affectionate. Peter Sellers loved India and Michael Bates loved India, he spoke Hindi and I think you can just tell. The blacking-up does not become a prop; it’s not part of the joke, it’s just something they have to do because they happen to be the best actors to play the part. When the blacking-up is a prop, and made to look like a joke, like in Curry and Chips for instance, then yes, I object to it, though I love Spike Milligan8. But it is silly blacking-up really." (http://lisa.revues.org/664)
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ruby stevens
24Jan12
it even showed up in our recent mubi poll of 20 greatest films. and people criticized me for voting it down :\ i told them exactly what i thought, of course :P
Hani
9Oct11
I love movies that do not have a plot. This is why I love this one despite the unnecessary gags that have been used only to fill the 99 min, only few times they worked well. The two lonely characters and the drunk waiter had more to follow than what we have seen. And this is the only thing that remains after the movie ends. Gags evaporate.
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Everson, TCM Fest, Screening the Past, More
By David Hudson on April 28, 2011
The exhibition More Than That: Films by Kevin Jerome Everson opens today at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and will be on view
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A mixed but amusing bag
By Justyn on December 12, 2009
In places, Blake Edwards’s 1968 comedy is like a slicker version of Tati’s great “Playtime,” with Peter Sellers’s hapless outsider bumbling his way through an elaborate, expensive Hollywood home with… read review
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