Most people hear “The Pink Panther” and picture the cartoon cat. That’s a testament to how thoroughly Henry Mancini’s iconic theme and the DePatie-Freleng animated titles took on a life of their own. But Blake Edwards’s 1963 original is something else entirely: a sophisticated jewel-thief caper that was never supposed to be a comedy vehicle at all. Peter Sellers changed that by being so funny that nobody could look at anything else. Kino Lorber’s new 4K UHD, sourced from the original Technirama camera negative, gives this classic the presentation it’s always deserved.

The film was conceived as a glamorous heist picture starring David Niven (Around the World in 80 Days) as Sir Charles Lytton, a suave jewel thief known as “The Phantom,” and his pursuit of a priceless diamond (dubbed ‘The Pink Panther’) belonging to the exotic Princess Dala (Claudia Cardinale, 8½). Inspector Jacques Clouseau (Sellers) was meant to be a supporting player. But Edwards recognized early in filming what was happening: Sellers was stealing every scene with his improvisational brilliance, and the bumbling detective was becoming the real star.

By the time production wrapped in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Rome, and Paris, the balance of the film had fundamentally shifted so much so that Niven later requested his walk-on music at the Oscars be changed from the Pink Panther theme, admitting it wasn’t really his film.  However, it’s precisely that tension between the elegant caper and the comedic chaos is precisely what makes it work.

Robert Wagner (Harper) plays Niven’s nephew and accomplice, Capucine is Clouseau’s unfaithful wife Simone, and the whole thing plays out against impossibly gorgeous European locations. Edwards stages the comedy with a patience that modern films can’t seem to manage. The gags build. The timing is immaculate. And Sellers finds moments of physical comedy that feel genuinely spontaneous, even after multiple viewings. The chase sequence at the piazza, which Edwards acknowledged as an homage to Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent, is a highlight.

Mancini’s score is, of course, legendary. The soundtrack album hit number eight on the Billboard chart, earned Grammy and Academy Award nominations, and was eventually inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. The AFI ranked it twentieth among the greatest film scores ever composed. It’s impossible to separate the music from the film’s identity, and the lossless audio on this disc does it justice.

Kino Lorber’s 4K disc features a new HDR/Dolby Vision master from a 4K scan of the 35mm original Technirama camera negative, and the result is stunning. The Italian and French locations look absolutely gorgeous, with rich color reproduction and excellent fine detail. The archival Blake Edwards commentary is included on both discs, and the Blu-ray carries a strong selection of featurettes: a 28-minute documentary on the series, conversations with Wagner and Cardinale, a piece on the cartoon phenomenon, and a charming segment featuring former jewel thief Bill Mason discussing the real tip-toe life of a cat burglar.

In 2010, the Library of Congress selected The Pink Panther for preservation in the National Film Registry. That’s the kind of distinction that separates a good comedy from a permanent one. This disc makes it very easy to see why.