Peter Sellers, David Niven, Robert Wagner, Capucine, Claudia Cardinale, directed by Blake Edwards
For starters, the movie is about the theft of a jewel called the Pink Panther so the title is relevant, for once. As opposed to other movies where all Sellers' Inspector Clusseau does is bumble around and act idiot, in this movie he actually seems to exhibit some intelligence as he's able to deduce who the criminal is before anyone else. By fine-tuning Clusseau (I'll flat admit I probably didn't spell that name right) and making him appear more normal, it becomes more of a test of Seller's comic abilities to deliver a more subtle performance, and it just escalates the whole movie.
Don't worry, though, Clusseau still has his moments of clumsiness: he falls on a guy's broken leg, he gets his hand caught in someone else's beer mug, among other things. Just in this installment, the comedy is more evenly distributed among a number of characters here. His wife, who behind Clusseau's back, is both in love with and an accomplice for Clusseau's nemesis, the jewel thief, the jewel thief himself, the jewel thief's mischevious nephew, and the princess who's the Jewel Thief's next victim. There's a lot of elements of screwball comedy, where people's storylines cross in unexpected ways, and people are forced to hide under beds, behind doors, etc. The story is fun, and ends with a surprise twist that has a lot more humor packed into it, than 100 of Clussaeu's bouts of clumsiness, and it's set among a background of European Alps and Cheatteaus, in those nice 60s-tinted colors.