The Party (1968)

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

The Party is a 1968 American comedy film directed by Blake Edwards, starring Peter Sellers and Claudine Longet. The film has a very loose structure, and essentially serves as a series of setpieces for Sellers's improvisational comedy talents. The comedy is based on a fish out of water premise, in which a bungling Indian actor accidentally gets invited to a lavish Hollywood dinner party and "makes terrible mistakes based upon ignorance of Western ways" set in the 1960s.A film crew is making a Gunga Din-style costume epic. Unknown Indian actor Hrundi V. Bakshi (Sellers) plays a bugler, but continues to play even after being shot and after the director (Herb Ellis) yells "cut." Bakshi later accidentally blows up an enormous fort set rigged with explosives. The director fires Bakshi immediately and calls the studio head, General Fred R. Clutterbuck (J. Edward McKinley), about the mishap. Clutterbuck writes down Bakshi's name to blacklist him, but he inadvertently writes Bakshi's name on the guest list of his wife's upcoming dinner party.Bakshi then receives his invitation and drives to the party. Upon arrival at Clutterbuck's home, Bakshi tries to rinse mud off his shoe in a large pool that flows through the house, but he loses his shoe. After many failures, he is reunited with his shoe.Bakshi has awkward interactions with everyone at the party, including Clutterbuck's dog Cookie. He meets famous Western movie actor "Wyoming Bill" Kelso (Denny Miller), who gives Bakshi an autograph. Bakshi later accidentally shoots Kelso with a toy gun, but Kelso does not see who did it. Bakshi feeds a caged macaw bird food from a container marked "Birdie Num Num" and accidentally drops the food on the floor. Bakshi at various times during the film activates a panel of electronics that control the intercom, a fountain replica of the Manneken Pis (soaking a guest), and a retractable bar (while Clutterbuck is sitting at it). After Kelso hurts Bakshi's hand while shaking it, Bakshi sticks his hand into a bowl of crushed ice containing caviar. While waiting to wash his hand in the bathroom, he meets aspiring actress Michèle Monet (Longet), who came with producer C. S. Divot (Gavin MacLeod). Bakshi shakes Divot's hand, and Divot then shakes hands with other guests, passing around the fishy odor, even back to Bakshi after he has washed his hand.At dinner, Bakshi's place setting right by the kitchen door has a very low chair that puts his chin near the table. An increasingly drunk waiter named Levinson (Steve Franken) tries to serve dinner and fights with the other staff. During the main course, Bakshi's roast Cornish game hen accidentally catapults off his fork and becomes impaled on a guest's tiara. Bakshi asks Levinson to retrieve his meal, but the woman's wig comes off along with her tiara, as she obliviously engages in conversation. Levinson ends up brawling with other waiting staff, and dinner is disrupted.Bakshi apologizes to his hosts; then needs to go to the bathroom. He wanders through the house, opening doors and barging in on various servants and guests in embarrassing situations. He ends up in the back yard, where he accidentally sets off the irrigation sprinklers. At Divot's insistence, Monet gives an impromptu guitar performance of "Nothing to Lose," to impress the guests. Bakshi goes upstairs, where he saves Monet from Divot's unwanted sexual advances by dislodging Divot's toupee. Bakshi finally finds a bathroom, but he breaks the toilet, drops a painting in it, gets toilet paper everywhere, and floods the bathroom. To avoid being discovered Bakshi sneaks out on the roof and falls into the pool. Since he cannot swim, Monet leaps in to save him, but he's then coerced to drink alcohol to warm up. Bakshi is unaccustomed to alcohol, and he struggles to put on a dry red terry toweling jumpsuit. He finds Monet crying in the next room and consoles her. Divot bursts in and demands Monet leave with him. Monet says no, and Divot cancels her screen test for him the next day. Bakshi convinces her to stay and have a good time with him. They return to the party in borrowed clothes as a Russian dance troupe arrives. The party gets wilder, and Bakshi offers to retract the bar to make room for dancing. Instead, he accidentally opens a retractable floor with a pool underneath, causing guests to fall in the pool. Levinson makes more floors retract, and more guests fall in. Clutterbuck's daughter arrives with friends and a baby elephant painted with "THE WORLD IS FLAT" on its forehead and hippie slogans over the rest of its body. Bakshi takes offense and asks them to wash the elephant. The entire house is soon filled with soap bubbles from the cleaning.Back at his home, Divot suddenly realizes that Bakshi is the fired actor who blew up the set, and he races back to the party. As the band plays on, Clutterbuck tries to save his suds-covered fine-art paintings. The air conditioning blows suds everywhere as the guests dance to psychedelic music, and Clutterbuck's distraught wife falls into the pool three times; twice from an upper balcony and once from the main level. Divot pulls up as the police and fire department personnel work to resolve everything. Bakshi apologizes one last time to Clutterbuck as Divot reveals who Bakshi is, but Clutterbuck accidentally chokes a waiter instead of Bakshi. Kelso gives Bakshi an autographed photo and Stetson hat as Bakshi and Monet leave in Bakshi's Morgan three-wheeler car. Outside her apartment, Bakshi and Monet appear on the verge of admitting that they have fallen for each other. Bakshi gives Monet the hat as a keepsake, and she says he can come get it any time. Bakshi suggests he could come by next week, and she readily agrees. Bakshi smiles and drives off as his car backfires.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Party_(1968_film)12C Grozescu Maria-Valentina

Timing is everything in comedy, and thus thrilling classic is probably the most continuously hysterical film that I have seen in years. This is one of those films where you must watch without distraction and without turning away for any reason. Those who dismiss comedy as not an art form should open up to films like this where every moment is staged to be precisely perfect down to the second. This really has no major plot, just the goings on at a lavish Hollywood party where Sellers, as an accident prone Indian actor, shows up stag and unknowingly turns the evening into a series of accidents, aided by a drunken server, a few ditsy starlets, and just plain bad timing. While there are a few familiar faces involved (Marge Champion as the hostess and Gavin MacLeod with a toupee as a rather nasty guest), the supporting cast is mainly unknown actors who are directed to not react to the things going on, giving the assumption that they were simply to ignore everything going on around them, exposing pretentious behavior from the audacious guests.The genius of Peter Sellers and director Blake Edwards surpassed the two Pink Panther films with this where every inconceivable accident happens to him. I don't find anything offensive in Sellers' portrayal of a Hindu man; in fact he's quite lovable in his flaws, gentility and sincerity. So while it may indeed be a mad, mad, mad, mad party, there's nothing maddening for the audience except perhaps the fact that it will take several viewings to capture everything going on.

You all ate birdie num num. Nobody noticed what is written on the proverbial elephant in the room forehead: "The World is Flat!" Didn't see that? You didn't get it! Also says, "chicken little was right," "Socrates eats Hemlock," and "Go naked." Blake Edward's birth name: William Blake, famous poet who wrote poem about flat earth. Theme modeled after William Blake's "Island in the Moon." Bakshi's orange jumpsuit, same worn by astronauts. Bakshi says speak with a forked tongue twice. NASA's logo: red forked snakes tongue. Kelso means "High Level Sheep." Hostess name: Alice. Boss name: Fred, an acronym for F@#ing ridiculous economic disaster, nickname for Lockheed 6-5 Galaxy first flown 1968, same year movie released. Bakshi puts his hand in "Operation Fishbowl" Something smells fishy! None of you get it! Bake Edwards was extremely brilliant, everything in the movie means something. Name on guest list Bernard Stein. Dig deeper, join the real party!

That opening scene is hilarious, a take-down of all those old British colonials in the Khyber Pass movies. After Bakshi (Sellers) accidentally blows up the movie set, he gets mistakenly invited to the producer's Hollywood mansion party, where he makes a similar shambles. He may be a congenital screw-up, but somehow never lacks for dignified bearing. The house could be collapsing, yet there he would be, still standing, a sickly smile and manful composure. As the hapless screw-up, Sellers delivers in spades.Director Edwards has a big challenge— he has a series of comedic sketches but basically no story or dialog. For one thing, he brings in Steve Franken, (from TV's Dobie Gillis), as a drunken waiter to help Sellers carry the comedic load. Together, their screw-ups turn polite society into a kind of Marx Bros. chaos. Plus the indoor pool is great comedic inspiration. The sketches are mostly pretty funny, but I'm with those who find the last 20-minutes a misfire. By building the turmoil, Edwards has to climax with something boffo to top all the rest. But the hippie kids, painted elephant and watery foam, are more awkward contrivance than comedic topper. Then too, by that time, the one-note premise has worn pretty thin.Nonetheless, the movie has more than its share of laughs, thanks mainly to that genius of the artful bumble, Peter Sellers.