I've seen another documentary as well as his bio pic starring Geoffrey Rush and they have a completely different feel to them than "The Unknown Peter Sellers". The first two focus mostly on the private life of Sellers....and it's not a nice picture. In many ways, he seemed like a man full of insecurities and a man who seemed to have a knack for alienating others. I don't recommend them so much because most folks would rather remember the genius of Sellers on camera or radio....and that's exactly what you get in "The Unknown Peter Sellers".
In this nearly one hour film, you follow Sellers from his first work with the BBC until his death in 1980. Much of it is very interesting though the film pretty much ignores the terrible films he made, as oddly following so many brilliant films he then chose inferior projects. It did allude to it, saying his early 70s films were pretty bad...though it also ignores his horrible late career films ("The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu" and "The Prisoner of Zenda" come to mind)....and only talked about "Being There" (which was brilliant). So this means that it's less a true retrospective of his work and more a look at his best work....which for most people probably isn't a bad thing as we really don't want to focus on the bad. Incomplete but enjoyable.
In this nearly one hour film, you follow Sellers from his first work with the BBC until his death in 1980. Much of it is very interesting though the film pretty much ignores the terrible films he made, as oddly following so many brilliant films he then chose inferior projects. It did allude to it, saying his early 70s films were pretty bad...though it also ignores his horrible late career films ("The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu" and "The Prisoner of Zenda" come to mind)....and only talked about "Being There" (which was brilliant). So this means that it's less a true retrospective of his work and more a look at his best work....which for most people probably isn't a bad thing as we really don't want to focus on the bad. Incomplete but enjoyable.