On Television This Week
After all the sequels and the canonization of Peter Sellers as a comic genius for all time, people misremember The Pink Panther (TCM, Sun., Feb. 13, 3:30 a.m.) as a Sellers comedy. Revisit the film, directed by Blake Edwards in 1963, and you'll discover a comic romance of the French Riviera, cinematic cousin to Alfred Hitchcock's wonderful trifle To Catch a Thief. David Niven, not Sellers, may or may not be the infamous Phantom, the notorious jewel thief striking terror into the hearts of the moneyed few, and looking to steal the legendary Pink Panther diamond.
What Niven definitely is, channeling Cary Grant as gamely as he can, is an international lover wooing the luscious Claudia Cardinale. Sellers makes his debut appearance as Inspector Clouseau, a bumbling police inspector hounded by his shrewish wife who's and fond of humiliating pratfalls. The Pink Panther is not particularly funny, nor is it Sellers at his best, but it is charming.
The heir to Sellers-a brilliant comic and haphazard performer-is Roberto Benigni, and his strongest straight comedy is Johnny Stecchino (IFC, Sun., Feb. 13, 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.; Mon., Feb. 14, 8:05 a.m.), a classic of mistaken identity in which a mild-mannered bus driver is mistaken for underworld boss Johnny Stecchino. Benigni's lighthearted update of Chaplin's The Great Dictator is one of the funniest films of the 1990s, and provides him with his two funniest roles to date.
A great comedian who never received his appropriate due was Fred Astaire. Distracted by his nimble feet, audiences never fully appreciated Astaire's remarkable gift for light comedy. The first film to feature Astaire and Rogers in leading roles was 1934's The Gay Divorcee, made after the positive reception for their second-banana performances in the previous year's Flying Down to Rio. Fred and Ginger films always depended on mistaken identity as well, and here Fred, a dancer, is mistaken for the professional gigolo hired by Ginger to help end her marriage. The bickering couple is surrounded by the usual sterling assemblage of supporting actors, including the superbly effeminate duo of Edward Everett Horton and Eric Blore, there to inoculate the un-macho Astaire from any intimations of sissy-ness.
Director Mark Sandrich gets no auteurist love these days, but he directed the bulk of the Fred and Ginger films (with the notable exception of Swing Time, helmed by George Stevens) with panache and rhythm, knowing better than to interfere with the effervescent push and pull of Astaire and Rogers' repeated dance of attraction and repulsion. Sandrich never committed the sin that mars so many contemporary musicals-that of using rapid editing to distract from the wholeness of the musical sequences. Then again, Chicago, Moulin Rouge and the rest lacked the luxury of performers as effortlessly magical as Astaire and Rogers.