The Ghost of Peter Sellers

Among the relatively new genre of documentaries about movies that never came out — Jodorowsky’s Dune, Lost in La Mancha — this chronicle from director Peter Medak (The Ruling Class) stands out. For one thing, Medak was also the director of the film in question, 1973’s Ghost in the Noonday Sun, a slapstick pirate comedy starring Peter Sellers that sank before it reached theaters. For another, Medak’s interviews with a parade of key players — producers, crew, agents, actors, Sellers’ widow — have the bemused frankness that only comes with 40-plus years of experience and distance.

The documentary’s title refers not to the supernatural but to the imposing shadow Sellers casts over everyone’s memories. A brilliant comic actor (at least in movies better than Noonday Sun), Sellers was notoriously “difficult” — a characterization he addresses in one of many archival interviews. During this ill-fated production, filmed largely and so unwisely aboard an actual ship at sea off the coast of Cyprus, he was evidently impossible, even faking a heart attack at one point to return to London for dinner with a princess.

More than just a talking heads ‘n’ clips film, The Ghost of Peter Sellers was filmed chiefly in Cyprus at the sites where the Noonday Sun disaster unfolded, which gives it the gravity of a pilgrimage. Medak’s 45-year-old wounds, from what was just his third feature — after the incredible success of The Ruling Class — are still tender. He’s not alone: At one point he arranges a roundtable with other directors who helmed Sellers pictures, an amazing bonding/therapy session to witness.

Unlike other documentaries about ill-fated movie productions, Ghost makes no case that its subject is a lost masterpiece. Rather, it’s a case study in naiveté (Medak’s) and hubris (Sellers’) and the havoc they bring down on countless other lives, from co-star Tony Franciosa to Cypriot locals to the stunt coordinator. It takes an incredible crew to make a movie, but it can take only one man to bring it crashing down around them. Ghost will make you glad you never saw Noonday Sun — scenes from which look awful quite apart from the production woes — but anyone interested in the history and craft of moviemaking should certainly see this documentary.

Grade: A. Not rated, but PG-13 equivalent. Available May 22 from the Sofa Cinema streaming video program on the Grail Moviehouse website.

(Photo: The poster for The Ghost of Peter Sellers, detail)