The Party

1968. USA. Produced and directed by Blake Edwards. The Mirisch Corporation/United Artists. Screenplay by Edwards, Tom Waldman, Frank Waldman. With Peter Sellers, Claudine Longet, Marge Champion. The first of Edwards’s wickedly satirical attacks on Hollywood (followed by 10 and S.O.B.), with Sellers as a disaster-prone Indian actor who wreaks havoc on a studio chief’s lavish party. Edwards choreographed the film’s hilariously anarchic set pieces, by turns farcical and slapstick in the go-for-broke manner of the Marx Bros.’s Duck Soup, with the kind of extremely long takes that have become all-too rare in contemporary comedy. 99 min.