Comic obliviousness at its finest.
We know your watching time is limited. And the amount of things available to watch … is not. Looking for a movie? Nearly any movie ever made? It's probably streaming somewhere. That's a lot of movies. |
Below, we're suggesting two of them, the latest of our weekly double-feature recommendations. We think the movies will pair well — with each other and with you. |
Your weekly double feature: Peter Sellers |
 | | Peter Sellers in "Being There."United Artists |
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'Being There' and 'A Shot in the Dark' |
If Hal Ashby's satire "Being There" (1979) had been made any time during the past few years, there would have been no mistaking the real-life analog to its protagonist, Chance the gardener: a simpleton who gains access to presidential power despite having learned most of what he knows from TV. But the film, now streaming on Hulu, was released over 40 years ago. Now we can simply marvel at its prescient attack on media and political culture, and on the ways vapid punditry can pass as homespun wisdom. |
With his placid facial expressions and his gentlemanly manner, Peter Sellers's Chance isn't a malevolent figure so much as a cipher to whom ill-intentioned people can attach their ambitions. Chance has spent his life tending the gardens at a D.C. townhouse, but when his wealthy benefactor dies without leaving him any claim to the estate, he finds himself outside the property for the first time. After a twist of fate puts him in the company of a presidential adviser (Melvyn Douglas) and his wife (Shirley MacLaine), Chance's inane mutterings about the finer points of gardening, like "stimulating growth," are mistaken for political insight. |
Such a scenario, we now know, is not as outrageous as it sounds. |
Sellers's talent for comic obliviousness was honed in the Pink Panther films as his Inspector Clouseau bungled his way to the bottom of mysteries — a testament either to blind luck or to good instincts masked by incompetence. Masterfully directed by Blake Edwards, the second and best of the series, "A Shot in the Dark" (1964), is part whodunit, part upstairs/downstairs farce, with Clouseau investigating the murder of a chauffeur at a country estate. Clouseau is absolutely convinced that the prime suspect, a pretty blonde maid (Elke Sommer), is innocent of the crime, even as other staff members are murdered and she seems the likely culprit each time. Is he a blithering idiot for continually releasing her from jail? Maybe not. SCOTT TOBIAS |
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