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The plotting in most of the Pink Panther movies is beside the point and many times, it feels as if explanatory or unifying moments have been hacked wholesale out of the final film. Edwards and his co-scenarists have a knack for banter and individual sequences that are brilliant and when several of these can be strung together (as in The Pink Panther Strikes Again, which features almost nothing but epic ballets of slapstick and well-choreographed bizarre violent deaths) the result is intoxicating. A Shot in the Dark opens with just such a sequence. As a gorgeous cabaret style rendition of an original Henry Mancini tune, "Shadows of Paris," plays on the soundtrack, the camera tracks a roundelay of infidelities occurring at a country house. The sequence takes place as a nearly five minute tracking shot with no cuts and no dialogue, all in medium distance. In retrospect, it can be seen as nod to the stage origins of the material, but it is so deft and haunting (in tone unlike anything else that will follow) I was reminded of Antonioni's melancholic tracking sequence that ends The Passenger and would love to praise Edwards for the homage, but of course A Shot in the Dark arrived on the scene a full decade earlier.

The sequence ends with shots fired and a body and it is to this investigation that Clouseau is mistakenly assigned. He becomes enamored of the prime suspect, the gorgeous blond maid Maria Gambrelli (Sommers) and is convinced she is innocent, despite all evidence to the contrary (and several more bodies to follow). As with The Pink Panther Strikes Again, A Shot in the Dark is essentially a string of (mostly) brilliant individual sequences: Clouseau's game of pool with the head of the house, in which within a matter of minutes, the table, the pool cues and pretty much everything else not nailed down has been reduced to wreckage; a chase through a nudist colony; an aborted attempt at synchronizing watches; and a deranged riff on those clichéd "assembling the suspects to point fingers at all of them" endings.

Truthfully, the plot here is as complex and unfathomable as The Big Sleep or Miller's Crossing. I am still not exactly sure who murdered whom or was being blackmailed by whom, but since Clouseau, even with his convictions of Maria's innocence, remains clueless up until to the end (and through it), I don't feel too terribly worried. I mentioned earlier about Edwards preference for shifting tones and A Shot in the Dark is no exception. There is an extended interlude about three-quarters of the way through that features Clouseau narrowly (and blissfully unaware) avoiding death not once but four times, as civilians or innocents around him are knifed or poisoned. It culminates with Clouseau almost consummating an attraction with Maria, before . . . well I won't spoil that particular coitus interruptus gag.

I must confess that the fascination with Inspector Clouseau and his praise as a great comic creation remains a mystery to me. There are certainly any number of truly inspired gags, pratfalls and mangled line readings ("rit of fealous jage" gets me every time) performed by Sellers that are genius, but Clouseau has always struck me as a little too poorly defined to be a great comic character. He is whatever he needs to be in each particular scene: clumsy here but not here; overly dense this moment but not the next. This lack of consistency, combined with Sellers's overly improvisational nature best served by being matched with a precise director (look at what Stanley Kubrick did with him), leaves me cold just as often as it leaves me in stitches. The Clouseau that I most often choose to see (and prefer) is the one who is fairly a jackass, who brings things upon himself, but manages to suck others into his vortex as well. I don't buy the whole "there is a little Clouseau in all of us" unless that is not meant strictly as a compliment.

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