“I want to kill people, but they’re all dead,” director Peter Medak says with unambiguous bitterness and enduring resentment in the new documentary “The Ghost Of Peter Sellers.” Usually, when a doc recounts the disastrous making of a runaway film — in this case, Medak’s ill-fated, still-unreleased 17th Century pirate comedy “Ghost In The Noonday Sun” starring the great Peter Sellers — the film has objectivity in another filmmaker.
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Eleanor Coppola‘s “Hearts Of Darkness” bluntly chronicled the brutal struggle to make Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now”; Les Blank’s “Burden Of Dreams” detailed the troubled production of Werner Herzog’s “Fitzcarraldo” and no one can forget “Lost In La Mancha” about Terry Gilliam’s heart-aching, aborted first attempt at making “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.” These films, generally, the classic ones anyhow, are about sacred touchstones of cinema that were Sisyphean tasks to pull off or the tragedy of their demise.
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However, “The Ghost Of Peter Sellers,” about the making of Medak’s calamitous comedy — about a shabby pirate who kills a Captain, but then relies on his ghost to recover his buried treasure — directed by Medak himself is something else. Something painful and outrageous and a production that still haunts the Hungarian filmmaker emotionally and psychologically forty-two years later.
Seemingly governed by Murphy’s Law and shot mostly on the Mediterranean sea, on real ships, aside from what sounds like a terribly misconceived, incomplete screenplay, ‘Noonday Sun’ began production with a red sky at morning, warning: a drunk Greek captain smashing the boat on the rocks of Kyrenia’s magnificent 7th Century harbor. It was all pretty much downhill from there and Peter Sellers —the notoriously difficult, genius comedian — lost confidence in his director nearly immediately, essentially called for an early mutiny on the bounty, and then made Medak’s life hell for a shoot he barely showed up for and even faked a heart attack during, flying to England to the hospital and everything (!!).
Co-starring comedian Spike Milligan, who rewrote the script midway through production, only making it more incomprehensible, the rest is nearly pointless to detail aside from saying it was a nightmare endeavor for a director that should have quit, but stayed the course for financial reasons, pride and fear of what would happen to his reputation. Instead, tantrums, tears, mayhem and an everlasting heartache ensued. ‘Noonday Sun’ was scrapped in post-production, the producers realizing they had a huge flop on their hand very early on, but soldiered on because they wanted to get paid.
“The Ghost Of Peter Sellers” can be hard to watch and often feels self-serving and disproportionately aggrieved at times. The now-80-year-old filmmaker has simply not let go of the loss of “Ghost In The Noonday Sun ” in the slightest and sees the film in retrospect as a kind of a monumental betrayal on multiple fronts (Sellers, the producers, writers), which also makes the documentary absolutely fascinating to witness.
It’s part sadomasochistic, self-imposed crucifixion; Medak self-flagellating himself with guilt over how this calamity came to pass even though by all accounts, little of it was his fault. It’s part acrimonious psychoanalysis of Peter Sellers with Medak interviewing dozens of associates and people who worked on the film, essentially asking them: “Jesus Christ, it’s not just me, this guy was difficult and crazy, right? RIGHT?” It’s nearly a revenge film on Peter Sellers at times. The doc is also a ghastly cautionary tale about how not to make a movie, never to make one for money, and to never ever make a costly, complicated film without a finished script.
Worse, ‘Noonday Sun,’ does not remotely look like a secret masterpiece that is hidden in the faults and may finally see the light of day because of this documentary. It looks absolutely f*cking dreadful; an ill-conceived folly that no one should mourn and Medak should be thankful never saw the light of day (the footage shown is brutally unfunny).
Having come off a string of hits, including “The Ruling Class,” starring Peter O’Toole which premiered at Cannes in 1972, it’s clear that Medak looks at ‘Noonday Sun’ as a turning point in his career and life. Aside from some strong films in the ’80s and ’90s (“The Changeling” and “The Krays“), the director would never go to the illustrious career he thought would be in the cards after working with the great Peter Sellers. Much of his resentment lies in this “What if?” and there appears to be a big wounded ego in play.
It’s fascinating to watch the genuinely-still-traumatized Medak in the film. He curses a blue streak, still appears fuming mad and yet still relentlessly goes forward, stirring up the past and uncomfortable memories. A few scenes are excruciating, including one where a producer recites to Medak a never-before-read letter where they trash the filmmaker without his knowledge. Another scene, a fellow friend asks, “Why the hell are you doing this? Why are you putting yourself through this?” and one can only assume everyone who saw the premiere in Venice stood up and simultaneously yelled, “THANK YOU, YES! WHY?”
Yet, just when you think “The Ghost Of Peter Sellers” is the angriest film a filmmaker has ever made about his own work, it evolves and morphs revealing itself to be more emotionally complex than one initially pegged. A sense of failed responsibility still plagues the director as if he still believes somehow, deep down, he could have pulled it off had Sellers just stayed in line (seems very doubtful). His shame, lack of self-respect, and the self-reproach he lashes on himself eventually turn Medak more sympathetic in the portrait (the remembrances of his Jewish upbringing during WWII as a child and his brother and father’s premature death at a young age are also quite sad). And then there’s the heartbreaking recollection of a reconciliation that an oblivious Sellers attempts a few years later. “I absolutely loved him because he was a fucking genius,” Medak says, through choked-up tears, remembering a drunken reunion which was the last time he saw the comedian before his death in 1980.
Emotionally and psychologically, “The Ghost Of Peter Sellers,” is an A-grade film. Aesthetically, however, it’s a little flat, and kind of takes too long to truly reveal itself even at a scant 93 minutes. Still, it’s ultimately an emotionally cathartic and absorbing movie about a man who can’t let go, yet wants to be free. A world champion at nursing a grudge, Peter Medak eventually reveals himself to be a sensitive artist with a deep scar, who caught a bad break and just wishes the tides of fate would have been kinder. [B+]
Check out all our coverage from the 2018 Venice Film Festival here.
