<center>
</center>
Thursday, December 16, 2010; 1:52 PM
Blake Edwards died Wednesday of pneumonia at a hospital in Santa Monica. Adam Bernstein reflects on the life of the Blake Edwards and his films:
In a six-decade career that rejected easy categorization, Mr. Edwards received an honorary Academy Award in 2004 for "writing, directing and producing an extraordinary body of work."
Some of his best-known films included the sophisticated romance "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (1961) with Audrey Hepburn, the bleak story of a couple in an alcoholic spiral in "Days of Wine and Roses" (1962) starring Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick, and the taut manhunt story "Experiment in Terror" (1962) with Remick and Glenn Ford.
There also was "10" (1979), featuring Dudley Moore as a pop composer going through male menopause and Bo Derek as the object of his fantasies; "S.O.B." (1981), a scathing portrait of Hollywood personalities; and "Victor/Victoria" (1982), a cross-dressing farce starring Mr. Edwards's real-life wife, Julie Andrews.
Liz Kelly gives her thoughts on the life of Edwards and some of his most memorable films from "10" to "Breakfast at Tiffany's":
Edwards will be remembered as a comic genius for creating Peter Sellers's "Pink Panther" character and for writing and directing a slew of comedies -- including "10," "Victor/Victoria" and "S.O.B." -- the last two starring his wife of 41 years, Julie Andrews. His films became the template for '80s-era smart comedy. But the writer/director also had a serious side, directing Audrey Hepburn in 1961's adaptation of Truman Capote's "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and 1962's brutal look at alcoholism, "Days of Wine and Roses."
From Variety.com: "I would not be able to get through life had I not been able to view its painfulness in a comedic way," he once told a reporter. "So when I put life up there on the screen, quite often it resembles things that happen to me or at least comic metaphors for those things."
One of Edwards' greatest legacies is the "Pink Panther" franchise, as T. Rees Shapiro remembers:
The Panther series, which began in 1964 with "The Pink Panther" and "A Shot in the Dark," brought Mr. Edwards his most devoted following.
The films's inspired lunacy owed a great deal to actor Peter Sellers, who played the unbearably snobbish, pompous and incompetent French police inspector Jacques Clouseau. The films were crammed with one-liners of vaudeville vintage. Sellers, playing Clouseau, leans down to pet a dog and asks its presumptive owner, "Does your dog bite?"
The dog then attacks the policeman's leg, and the man explains, "That's not my dog." When Clouseau destroys a grand piano, the instrument's incredulous caretaker rebukes him, "Why, that's a priceless Steinway!"
The inspector replies, "Not anymore."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/16/AR2010121603910.html
May he rest in peace...
Thursday, December 16, 2010; 1:52 PM
Blake Edwards died Wednesday of pneumonia at a hospital in Santa Monica. Adam Bernstein reflects on the life of the Blake Edwards and his films:
In a six-decade career that rejected easy categorization, Mr. Edwards received an honorary Academy Award in 2004 for "writing, directing and producing an extraordinary body of work."
Some of his best-known films included the sophisticated romance "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (1961) with Audrey Hepburn, the bleak story of a couple in an alcoholic spiral in "Days of Wine and Roses" (1962) starring Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick, and the taut manhunt story "Experiment in Terror" (1962) with Remick and Glenn Ford.
There also was "10" (1979), featuring Dudley Moore as a pop composer going through male menopause and Bo Derek as the object of his fantasies; "S.O.B." (1981), a scathing portrait of Hollywood personalities; and "Victor/Victoria" (1982), a cross-dressing farce starring Mr. Edwards's real-life wife, Julie Andrews.
Liz Kelly gives her thoughts on the life of Edwards and some of his most memorable films from "10" to "Breakfast at Tiffany's":
Edwards will be remembered as a comic genius for creating Peter Sellers's "Pink Panther" character and for writing and directing a slew of comedies -- including "10," "Victor/Victoria" and "S.O.B." -- the last two starring his wife of 41 years, Julie Andrews. His films became the template for '80s-era smart comedy. But the writer/director also had a serious side, directing Audrey Hepburn in 1961's adaptation of Truman Capote's "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and 1962's brutal look at alcoholism, "Days of Wine and Roses."
From Variety.com: "I would not be able to get through life had I not been able to view its painfulness in a comedic way," he once told a reporter. "So when I put life up there on the screen, quite often it resembles things that happen to me or at least comic metaphors for those things."
One of Edwards' greatest legacies is the "Pink Panther" franchise, as T. Rees Shapiro remembers:
The Panther series, which began in 1964 with "The Pink Panther" and "A Shot in the Dark," brought Mr. Edwards his most devoted following.
The films's inspired lunacy owed a great deal to actor Peter Sellers, who played the unbearably snobbish, pompous and incompetent French police inspector Jacques Clouseau. The films were crammed with one-liners of vaudeville vintage. Sellers, playing Clouseau, leans down to pet a dog and asks its presumptive owner, "Does your dog bite?"
The dog then attacks the policeman's leg, and the man explains, "That's not my dog." When Clouseau destroys a grand piano, the instrument's incredulous caretaker rebukes him, "Why, that's a priceless Steinway!"
The inspector replies, "Not anymore."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/16/AR2010121603910.html
May he rest in peace...
