General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

The Party (1968 film)

The Party is a 1968 American comedy directed by Blake Edwards, in which the bumbling Indian actor Hrundi V. Bakshi, played by Peter Sellers, is accidentally invited to a Hollywood producer's party and reduces the evening to chaos. It was the only non-Pink Panther collaboration between Edwards and Sellers, and it is built almost entirely on sight gags: the screenplay ran about 63 pages, roughly half the length of a normal Hollywood script, and about three quarters of the film plays without conversational dialogue.¹^•²^•³

Key fact	Detail
Release	4 April 1968, New York opening; Los Angeles opening 8 April 1968; 99 minutes¹
Principal cast	Peter Sellers (Hrundi V. Bakshi), Claudine Longet (Michele Monet), J. Edward McKinley (Fred Clutterbuck), Marge Champion¹^•⁴
Key crew	Written and produced by Blake Edwards with Tom and Frank Waldman; cinematography Lucien Ballard; editing Ralph E. Winters; music Henry Mancini¹
Working title	Briefly retitled R.S.V.P. before reverting to The Party¹
Budget and returns	Budget reported at $2.8 million, later $2.9 million; the film grossed $2.9 million in film rentals, equal to its estimated budget¹
Dialogue-light design	Screenplay of about 63 pages, about half a normal script; roughly 75 percent of the film without conversational dialogue¹^•²
Contemporary scores	Rotten Tomatoes 83% Tomatometer from 24 reviews, 88% audience score; Metacritic metascore 64⁵^•⁶

Spoilers

Plot and premise

A Hollywood studio imports a stage actor from New Delhi to lend authenticity to its production of Son of Gunga Din. Their chosen lead, Hrundi V. Bakshi, is a walking disaster: while tying his shoe he triggers explosives that destroy the set of the epic war film, and the furious director tells executive Fred Clutterbuck to have him fired. Through a clerical mix-up, Bakshi's name is instead added to the guest list for Clutterbuck's exclusive annual party at his Hollywood mansion, where his gaffes turn the evening into escalating disaster.²^•⁵

The gags accumulate through the house's gadgetry. Bakshi transforms a fountain into a geyser, turns a roast chicken into headwear for a woman, and converts a public address system into a blasting stream of muzak; an electronically controlled sliding floor panel that receives hardly a mention in the screenplay grows into an elaborate comic set piece, as does a toilet that malfunctions. By morning the villa is flooded, the guests are drunk or in hysterics, and a baby elephant occupies the swimming pool.²^•⁷^•⁸ Bakshi is aided by a young French guest, Michele Monet (Claudine Longet), a drunken waiter, the family's children, and a troupe of Russian dancers.⁴

Production

Origins. The project re-teamed Edwards with Sellers, whose collaboration had begun with The Pink Panther (1964) in the early 1960s; it was their only joint film outside that series. The project was announced in a 25 February 1967 New York Times item, and the film was briefly retitled R.S.V.P. before reverting to The Party.¹^•³ Producer Walter Mirisch knew that Sellers and Edwards were considered liabilities; in his autobiography he wrote that Blake had achieved a reputation as a very expensive director, particularly after The Great Race. Edwards, Sellers, and principals of the Mirisch Corporation agreed to defer their salaries.⁹^•¹

Improvisation and the script. The original concept was inspired by silent film, with the action-heavy screenplay running only 63 pages. Edwards altered this approach by allowing Sellers and Longet to improvise as much dialogue as they wanted, and the film's comic set pieces grew well beyond what the script described.¹^•⁷

Video assist. In a 2 June 1967 Daily Variety article, Edwards was credited with a "breakthrough in camera technique": he mounted videotape equipment on top of the film camera to capture all action simultaneously, letting him review instant replays and decide whether to re-shoot or change angles. Directors typically had to wait for dailies processed overnight. Jerry Lewis was said to have employed a similar system for years. The videotape process cost $1,100 per week, and Edwards claimed the savings more than offset the expenditure.¹

Shooting. Principal photography was scheduled to begin 1 May 1967 but was delayed two weeks, starting 15 May 1967 on the MGM studio lot. Except for the pre-title sequence on a film set, the picture takes place entirely at the home of Fred Clutterbuck; the house interior reportedly cost $150,000 and was built at least partially on Soundstage 5 at MGM. During the elephant washing scene, firefighting equipment covered the set in cleansing foam. Filming moved to a Beverly Hills location in early July 1967, with principal photography scheduled to conclude five days early on 21 July 1967. Re-shoots on 10 February 1968 required the set to be rebuilt, while Sellers was filming I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! during the week.¹

Style and comic lineage

The film is essentially a string of jokes and sight gags built on Sellers's gift for mimicry, and it bears comparison to the comedies of Buster Keaton and Laurel and Hardy in the way Bakshi retains his innocence in the face of recurring disaster; it also shares Jacques Tati's fascination with gadgets and inanimate objects, and Edwards adopts Tati's idea that everyone in the frame is both source of gags and observer of the others.²^•¹⁰ The Museum of Modern Art, presenting the film in a 1986 Directors Guild tribute, called it a rarely screened tribute to silent slapstick comedy within Edwards's chronicle of postwar American life.¹¹

It sits outside the dominant currents of late-1960s Hollywood comedy, belonging neither to the emergent New Hollywood nor to the satirical mainstream; its lineage is partly classical American silent comedy and partly European art comedy, above all Tati, though the climactic invasion of body-painted hippies and an elephant daubed with slogans nods to the spirit of 1968.¹²

Reception and legacy

Critical reception at release was tepid, and the film was not regarded as a major success on the order of the Pink Panther films; contemporary American critics were divided on a comedy so deliberately thin in plot.¹^•¹² According to an 8 January 1969 Variety box-office chart, it grossed $2.9 million in film rentals, equal to its estimated budget.¹ Appreciation grew later and traveled further abroad: the film found warmer and more lasting appreciation in France and in India, where Sellers's Bakshi became a widely recognized figure.¹² Retrospective scores now stand at 83 percent on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer and a Metacritic metascore of 64.⁵^•⁶

The brownface question. The film has been criticized for whitewashing, the practice of casting a white actor, here Sellers, as a non-white character. Satyajit Ray, the director of The Apu Trilogy, visited Sellers on the set after having written the screenplay The Alien for him, and felt that the actor's impersonation of a New Delhi native was evolving into a coarse caricature. Current writing on the film commonly holds admiration for its craft in tension with discomfort or condemnation of the means.¹³^•²^•¹²

A remake was in the works as of early 2003, with filmmaker Jay Roach reported as planning to direct.¹

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026