Editing Inspector Clouseau (section)

===Overview===
Clouseau is an inept and incompetent police detective in the [[France|French]] [[National Police (France)|Sûreté]], whose investigations quickly turn to chaos. His absent-mindedness and extreme clumsiness almost always lead to destruction of property: while interviewing witnesses in ''[[The Pink Panther Strikes Again]]'', he falls down a set of stairs, gets his hand caught in a medieval [[knight]]'s gauntlet, then in a vase; knocks a witness senseless and voiceless, destroys a priceless [[piano]], and accidentally causes a [[Scotland Yard]] [[Superintendent (police)#Metropolitan Police|superintendent]] to be shot in the buttocks, all within nearly five minutes. Despite his lack of judgment and skill, Clouseau always manages to solve his cases and finds the correct culprits almost entirely by accident. 

Clouseau is promoted to Chief Inspector over the course of the series, and is regarded in other countries as [[France]]'s greatest detective, until they encounter him directly. His incompetence, combined with his luck and his occasionally correct interpretations of the situation, frustrate his direct superior, former Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfus so intensely, Dreyfus is eventually driven to insanity.   

While Clouseau is generally oblivious to his own ineptitude and genuinely believes he possesses superior expertise and intelligence, he occasionally appears to recognize his limitations. As a police detective, Clouseau also insists upon wearing ridiculously elaborate disguises and aliases that range from the mundane (a telephone company repairman) to the ludicrously preposterous (a buck-toothed hunchback with an oversized nose); but even in these absurd disguises he cannot hide his characteristic inanity.

Clouseau is a patriotic Frenchman; later films reveal he had fought in the [[French Resistance]] during the [[Second World War]]. He is repeatedly perplexed by transvestites, to the extent that he addresses them as "Sir or Madam". He has been prone to infatuation (often reciprocated) ever since the first film, in which his antagonist cuckolds him. 

Clouseau's faux French accent became much more exaggerated in the later films (for example, pronouncing "[[Room (architecture)|room]]" as "reum"; "[[Pope]]" as "Peup"; "[[bomb]]" as "beumb"; and "[[bumps]]" as "beumps"), and a frequent running gag in the movies was that even French characters had difficulty understanding what he was saying. In his earliest appearances, Clouseau appears slightly less inept than in the later films; but even in his first appearance he believes himself a skilled [[violinist]], but plays out of tune, and often appears clumsy at moments of highest seriousness. Sellers maintained that Clouseau's oversized ego made his klutziness even funnier, particularly in his regular attempts to remain dignified, elegant, and refined while causing comic chaos.