Word: jouvet
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...second half of the film is predictably somewhat less sharp. The numerous recollections of Clouseau are linked together by French television reporter Marie Jouvet (Joanna Lumley); her self-righteous journalistic fury at being "warned off" the Clouseau case by the detective's enemies was enough to make this reviewer reconsider his career goals. But the people Jouvet interviews en route to researching Clouseau's life generally hold their own, and Clouseau's doddering father (Richard Mulligan), a veteran wine grower who's sampled a little too much of his produce, is hysterical...
...Edwards should have done something to avoid having to dub in Clouseau's voice, for the two times he does so are occasions for wincing. But in general, the disappearance is foreshadowed well by shots of Clouseau's enemies scheming, and followed up on briskly by the commencement of Jouvet's search for the missing detective. In spite of the inspector's absence, the action moves quickly, thanks to well-chosen flashbacks...
...performances are stunning. Now there are two kinds of excellent actor. One molds each role into an extension or variation of his own marked personality-like Gielgud, Hawkins, Mastroianni, Robards, Fonda. The other, and greater, is able to obliterate the self and mint an entirely fresh being-like Chaplin, Jouvet, Oliver Guinness, Brando. Plummer belongs to the second type. Having recently seen his Hamlet, Arturo Ui, and Pizarro, I just can't believe they were all played by the same...
...bored." His humility may come from the memory of his own beginning years. The son of a poor Protestant tailor from Bordeaux, Anouilh got a job as secretary to Director Louis Jou-vet at the Comedie des Champs-Elysees. He earnestly began writing plays, but whenever the great Jouvet saw Anouilh, he would say: "Here comes our failure...
...unique complex of ingredients, of which his own voice is an essential one; and every actor can be validly judged only when that entire complex is presented inviolate. Otherwise, as Stanley Kauffman put it in his letter of protest, "I would never have heard the voices of Louis Jouvet, Edwige Feuillere, Takashi Shimura, Vittorio De Sica and Victor Sjostrom. These are only a few of the actors about whom I would know much less if Mr. Crowther had had his way." And I myself still recall the disconcerting experience of looking at even such light-weight stuff...