Inspector Clouseau
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- This article is about the character. For the film of this title, see Inspector Clouseau (1968 film).
Inspector Jacques Clouseau (later chief inspector) is a fictional detective in Blake Edwards's Pink Panther series. In most of the films, he was played by Peter Sellers (whose interpretation of the detective is generally considered by fans and critics to be the definitive one), with one film in which he was played by Alan Arkin and one in which he was played by an uncredited Roger Moore. In the most recent Pink Panther film, he was played by Steve Martin.
He is also the inspiration of the main character in a series of animated shorts inspired by the titles of the feature films. Though the character in the animated The Inspector was never given a name, he is clearly based on Clouseau.
In many countries, such as Greece, this character's name has become synonymous with policemen who keep making ludicrous assumptions and are utterly unable to crack even the easiest case.
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[edit] Character
Jacques Clouseau makes his first appearance in the 1963 film The Pink Panther.
He is a bumbling and incompetent French police officer whose investigations are most notably marked with chaos and destruction that he himself largely causes. Immensely clumsy, his various attempts at solving the case frequently lead to misfortune for himself and others - in The Pink Panther Strikes Again, he cannot even interview witnesses to a crime without falling down stairs, getting his hand caught in first a medieval knight's glove and then a vase, knocking a witness insensible, destroying a priceless piano and accidentally shooting another officer in the rear end. He is also not particularly intelligent, and will frequently follow a completely incorrect theory of the crime rather than what actually happened. His sheer incompetence, clumsiness and stupidity is enough to eventually drive his superior officer, Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfus, to murderous insanity - to such a degree that Dreyfus even went so far as to construct a doomsday device and attempted to take over the world just to ensure Clouseau's demise.
Regardless of his rather limited ability, he successfully solves his cases and finds the correct culprits, even if this success is achieved entirely inadvertently. As such, he was even promoted to Chief Inspector over the course of the series, and is regarded by many other characters who presumably have not met him as France's greatest detective; those characters he actually encounters, nevertheless, are quick to realise his incompetence and limitations. He is immensely egocentric and self-impressed; despite his many failings, he is seemingly convinced that he is a brilliant police officer destined to succeed and rise through the ranks of the police department. Despite this, Clouseau does appear to show some awareness that he is not the most competent or intelligent of people, as he is notably embarrassed by and quick to brush aside his more extreme acts of clumsiness, and attempts to appear elegant and refined regardless of what calamity he has just caused.
Sellers said in several interviews that the secret of Clouseau's character was his tremendous ego. His favorite example of Clouseau's ego was whenever someone said, "Phone call for Inspector Clouseau", Clouseau would reply, "Ah yes, that would be for ME." Sellers maintained that Clouseau's ego is what made the character's klutziness funnier because of his quest to remain elegant and refined while causing chaos everywhere he turned.[citation needed]
As portrayed by Sellers, Clouseau's French accent became steadily more exaggerated in successive films (for example, pronouncing "Pope" as "Peup"), and a frequent running gag in the movies was that even French characters would have difficulty understanding what he was saying. The accent may originally have been inspired by a comment by a French film director, in which he pronounced "house" as "'arse", to Sellers's fellow Goon, Michael Bentine, at a dinner party.[citation needed]
In his earliest appearances, Clouseau is actually less inept and exaggerated; much of the above character elements were not added until the 1970s. Sellers stepped away from playing the character following 1964's A Shot in the Dark (a film based upon a stage play into which the Clouseau character was inserted). When Clouseau returned in the 1968 film Inspector Clouseau, he was portrayed by American actor Alan Arkin; Edwards was not involved in this production. The creation of the animated Inspector character coincided with this film's release; thus, the cartoon version is based upon Arkin's portrayal of Clouseau. Although considered "non-canonical", the 1968 film does appear to have had an impact on the character when Sellers returned to the role in 1975's The Return of the Pink Panther, particularly in the character's mode of dress.
According to DVD liner notes for Return of the Pink Panther, Sellers and Edwards originally planned to produce a British television series centered around Clouseau, but a film was made instead. The movie was a box office success and led to several more films before Sellers died in 1980; biographies of Sellers such as Peter Sellers - A Celebration reveal that he involved in pre-production of another Clouseau film, The Romance Of The Pink Panther at the time of his death.
Blake Edwards attempted to continue telling Clouseau's story despite losing his lead actor. The 1982 film Trail of the Pink Panther utilized outtakes and alternate footage of Sellers as Clouseau in a new storyline in which a reporter investigates Clouseau's disappearance. In the process, she interviews characters from past Clouseau films, and also meets Clouseau's equally inept father (played by Richard Mulligan). The immediate sequel, Curse of the Pink Panther (1983) reveals that Clouseau underwent plastic surgery to change his appearance; the character appears on screen briefly in the form of a joke cameo appearance by Roger Moore, billed as "Turk Thrust II". Neither film was a box office success and the series (and the character) were retired.
Edwards attempted to revive the series in 1993 with Son of the Pink Panther, in which it is revealed that Clouseau had illegitimate children by Maria Gambrelli (a character who first appeared in A Shot in the Dark). Clouseau's son, Jacques Jr., was portrayed by Roberto Benigni, and has a twin sister, Jacqueline, played by Nicoletta Braschi. Jacques Jr. attempts to follow in his father's law enforcement footsteps, but is revealed to have inherited the same ineptness as his father.
[edit] The Pink Panther (2006)
Steve Martin's rendition of Clouseau in the 2006 film is considered to be a rebooting of the character. The film gives an origin to his role as an inspector: originally an inept police officer, he is hired by Chief Inspector Dreyfus to look bad and give Dreyfus the glory of solving the case himself. However the new film is set in a different continuity: Martin's Clouseau is considerably older than Sellers', and although the 2006 film was promoted as taking place prior to the events of the first Pink Panther film, the time frame has been advanced to the present day.
[edit] Filmography (and actor playing Clouseau)
- The Pink Panther (1963) - Peter Sellers
- A Shot in the Dark (1964) - Peter Sellers
- Inspector Clouseau (1968) - Alan Arkin
- The Return of the Pink Panther (1975) - Peter Sellers
- The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976) - Peter Sellers
- Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978) - Peter Sellers
- Trail of the Pink Panther (1982) - Peter Sellers (unused footage from previous films)
- Curse of the Pink Panther (1983) - "Turk Thrust II" (a.k.a. Roger Moore)
- The Pink Panther (2006) (the rebooting of the series) - Steve Martin
[edit] Other films
- The Romance Of The Pink Panther (Only two script drafts. Scrapped after Sellers's death.)
- Son of the Pink Panther (1993) (Featuring the character's son)
