Cast: Peter Sellers, Claudine Longet, Marge Champion, Fay McKenzie, Gavin MacLeod

Category: Comedy

Despite the abundance of fairly recent films I’ve seen over the past week, I’ve decided, on the recommendation of a fan, to open the vault this week and review the 1968 comedy classic The Party.

So much of this film’s appeal lies in its simplistic plot. Sellers dons the blackface to play Hrundi V. Bakshi, a hapless film extra who, through a clerical mistake ends up being invited to an exclusive Hollywood party instead of being fired. From there, chaos ensues at the hands of a man who urgently needs to be appropriate and polite in the context of the party, but his natural curiosity and unfamiliarity with his surroundings wreak havoc of the highest degree.

Sellers is fantastic as the main character, and really gets the chance to show off his various comedic styles in this film. He channels Chaplin’s unmistakable slapstick humour in several instances, while also working in a fair share of wordplay/more sophisticated laughs (whichever phrase you prefer) and his ability to improvise has paved the way for modern-day A-list comedians who rely on that skill including Steve Carell, Tina Fey and Will Ferrell.

While aspects of the film such as the supporting cast and the overall setting are hardly impressive (the entire film was shot on a painfully obvious MGM lot, in typical 1960s fashion), their importance falls by the wayside in a film centered primarily on comedy. Far more significant is the innovative and unique screenplay, ahead of its time in terms of the way dialogue between characters builds to create well structured and often elaborate jokes.

I feel that what sets this film apart from other concurrent and contemporary comedies alike is its reluctance to create a-laugh-a-minute scenarios. While it succeeds in making us laugh where appropriate, it also seeks to address social issues existing in 1960s American culture; just another example of how ahead of its time this film really was.

As Hrundi makes his way through the hosts’ gigantic house, he observes the pitfalls of the American Dream: drugs, alcoholism, greed, deceit, vanity, materialism, sexism, racism and societal constraints. Some twelve months later, the recently departed Dennis Hopper would direct Easy Rider, the undisputed authority on American subcultural criticism. Of course, The Party does not dissect these issues as thoroughly as Hopper and Fonda’s road trip epic, but it appropriately exemplifies the film’s multi-faceted direction.

The climax of The Party has been criticized for being too excessive and somewhat outside the tone of the film, but I believe it’s in keeping with the zany nature of many other comedies of that era, and only seems outlandish to us because of, for lack of a better phrase, a film-related generation gap. Otherwise, it’s a film that certainly benefits from multiple viewings, if only to gain a greater appreciation for Sellers’ comedic talents.

8/10.