A Shot in the Dark (1964)
Directed by Blake Edwards
Inspector Jacques Clouseau, smitten with the accused maid Maria Gambrelli, unwittingly turns a straightforward murder investigation into a comedic series of mishaps, testing the patience of his irritable boss Charles Dreyfus as casualties mount.
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What critics compared A Shot in the Dark to
Series lynchpin Inspector Clouseau (Peter Sellers) isn't even the central figure; that would be Sir Charles Litton (David Niven), a playboy plotting to steal the coveted Pink Panther diamond by ingratiating himself with its owner, Dala ( Once Upon a Time in the West 's Claudia Cardinale), a pampered princess decompressing at a ski chalet in Cortina.
Series lynchpin Inspector Clouseau (Peter Sellers) isn't even the central figure; that would be Sir Charles Litton (David Niven), a playboy plotting to steal the coveted Pink Panther diamond by ingratiating himself with its owner, Dala ( Once Upon a Time in the West 's Claudia Cardinale), a disenfranchised princess decompressing at a ski chalet in Cortina.
Nothing in The Pink Panther is as finessed as the bravura prologue of A Shot in the Dark, though even that lacks the perfectionist technique of what it's obviously aping, Hitch's Rear Window : backed by the strains of Henry Mancini's silky, lingering "Shadows of Paris," a farce unfolds in a labyrinthine apartment complex to which we are voyeuristically privy.