A BBC documentary portrait of Peter Sellers, filmed over a period of nine months in 1969 where director Tony Palmer interviews Sellers and friends and associates about the actor's career and life. At age 44, with 38 films already behind him, including Dr. Strangelove and two "Pink Panther" films, Sellers was then at the crest of his career. But his personal life, which included two bad marriages (and two more to come), a near-fatal 1964 heart attack, and increasingly disturbing personality disorders, was in tatters. His distrust of everyone, including Palmer, is evident here on-camera several times. We fellow Peter Sellers during the filming of his latest film 'The Magic Christian' on and off the set as he clowns with Ringo Starr; he sails to Majorca on his yacht, the Victoria Maria, takes a voyage to New York on the QE-2, plays with his photography hobby, and, in a chameleon-like, Dissociative Identity Disorder, slips in and out of voices, faces, and characters with quick and effortless ease. Mixed together is shots of the slaughter of a bull in the bullring in Spain, Sellers alone in a ski lift, describing the gruesome details of a heart operation, accompanied on the soundtrack by the childlike pathos of Benjamin Britten, the majesty of Jan Sibelius, and the plangent murmur of Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings.
Will the Real Mr Sellers.....?
Peter Sellars' acting career, made at the time of 'The Magic Christian'.
