Blake Edwards's The Party (1968)

The Party only illustrates the undisciplined talents of Peter Sellers.
---David Thomson, The Biographical Dictionary of Film.

Shocking as it may seem, The Party may very well be one of the most radically experimental films in Hollywood history; in fact, it may be the single most radical film made in Hollywood since D.W. Griffith's style came to dominate the American cinema.
--Peter Lehman and William Luhr, Blake Edwards

The Party, like many Edwards films, has an aspect of a fairy tale, but it also serves as Edwards's reminder to himself that there are values that are too precious to be lost.
--Myron Meisel, American Directors (Volume II)

Why some people admire Blake Edwards and others hate him has always been a mystery to me, though I think it has something to with attitudes to comedy.  Comedies vary between situational humor and anarchic humor and most comedies are one or the other, situational often being more verbal and anarchic being more physical, the difference between Lubitsch (whom I like) and the Marx Brothers (whom I don't like).  Blake Edwards is an unusual director in the way he combines the two, with some of his comedies being more verbal and others more physical.  The Party is more physical --there is very little discernible dialogue -- and visual, similar to Chaplin and Keaton and the more contemporary Jacques Tati.  Edwards is a master of the widescreen and with his cinematographer Lucien Ballard (who did a number of Sam Peckinpah's movies) creates rich and complex images, with different things happening in different parts of the screen.  In the center of it, and often on the sides, is Peter Sellers as the Indian Hrundi V. Bakshi, who is serene about himself but lost and confused on a film set and at a Hollywood party to which he is accidentally invited.

Like the best comedies The Party is effective on mulitple levels.  Bakshi is an outsider at the party and is as unsuccessful at conversation with self-involved Hollywood snobs as he is at finding the bathroom which, when he does find it, overflows as he tries to stuff in it the toilet paper that seems to have a life of its own.  Edwards's film is very much of its time (1968) in its attempts find common ground among cultures (Russian ballet dancers show up at the party) and shows an understanding of generation and cultural divides, as Sellers and Claudie Longet (who sings and plays the guitar) hook up to wash off an elephant that hippies have painted with slogans.  But The Party also transcends its time in its examination of the difficulties of social interaction in a strange environment and Edwards's use of exquisite detail, especially in the details of the house where the party is taking place, the food served, and the overworked kitchen staff listening to Vin Scully announcing a Dodgers game on the radio.