September 4, 2024
By Koraljka Suton
The subtext is nightmarish. The whole idea of people committed to a games situation. They’re fairly sin inspiration for ‘Sleuth’ was ister people. If there is a focal point, it’s that if people take fantasy for reality, and act upon it, it must end in disaster.
—Anthony Shaffer
In 1970, a play written by Anthony Shaffer opened on the West End to much critical acclaim and ended up being performed 2359 times. What followed was a successful Broadway run (a total of 1,222 performances) that resulted in a well-deserved Tony Award win. For all intents and purposes, Sleuth was a smash hit. And needless to say, the urge for one such play to be turned into a motion picture started becoming very palpable. The playwright was initially against this, fearing that a film adaptation would undermine his play’s success. But he was convinced to sell the movie rights and soon started working on the screenplay. The person set to direct was none other than Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who had won four Academy Awards (two for directing and two for best adapted screenplay) and garnered another five nominations thus far. After his 1963 historical drama Cleopatra almost caused 20th Century Fox to go bankrupt due to its excessive production and marketing costs (despite becoming the highest-grossing film of the year), Mankiewicz went on to direct only two small-budget films, a documentary and a television film. Sleuth was his first studio film after the 1963 fiasco. And seeing as how he decided to retire afterward, it turned out to be his last.
Mankiewicz’s swan song was nominated for four Academy Awards—Best Director (Mankiewicz’s sixth and final nomination), Best Original Dramatic Score (John Addison), Best Actor and… Best Actor. That’s right, the two leads both received Oscar nods for their performances, with neither of them taking home the prize (the golden statue went to Marlon Brando for his role in The Godfather). And those two equally deserving gentlemen were Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine. When Shaffer agreed to sell the rights, he had hope that the role of Andrew Wyke would go to Anthony Quayle, who played the part both on Broadway and the West End. Shaffer also had Alan Bates in mind when it came to finding the perfect actor to embody Milo Tindle. Alas, his wishes were disregarded, as Mankiewicz decided on Olivier (who had at one point in the past called the play “a piece of piss”) and Caine, respectively. Olivier was allegedly the one who wanted the then-thirty-nine-year-old actor to be cast alongside him.
But according to Shaffer, Caine was scared of working with Olivier, thinking that the acting legend would “overwhelm him.” Upon meeting him for the first time, Caine asked his co-star what he should call him, and Olivier replied “Lord Olivier.” He then went on to say that now that had been settled, Caine may simply call him “Larry.” When talking about his acting partner during a 1998 interview at the NFT, Caine said the following: “One day he came in with a little mustache and he stuck it on, and suddenly it all went right. He said: ‘I can never act with my bloody face! I have to have some bloody nose, or something on, and this will do.’ But up until then he was floundering about, not knowing what he was talking about. Larry was crafty. He would do rehearsals, and he’d mumble away and then suddenly he could be this absolute giant of an actor, although he was shorter than me. Sometimes he’d come out of the bloody shadows, like a whirlwind at me, and take me completely by surprise, because he’d never do it in rehearsals. He was a very craft bugger, Larry, and you had to hang on. The greatest review I ever got was after about a week [of filming with Olivier]. He said to me, ‘I thought at the beginning, Michael, I had a servant. I see I have a partner.’”
With the two leads cast and ready for action, the time came for the remaining roles to find their thespians. Alec Cawthorne got the part of Inspector Doppler, John Matthews played Detective Sergeant Tarrant, Eve Channing appeared as Marguerite Wyke and Teddy Martin took on the role of Police Constable Higgs. Or at least that’s what the film’s opening credits want us to believe. But upon embarking on the rollercoaster ride that is watching Sleuth, we are quickly faced with the fact that nothing is what it seems. And the made-up names in the credits manufactured so as to throw us off the scent turn out to be just the tip of the iceberg.
The film opens with Caine’s Milo Tindle, owner of a local hair salon, arriving at a secluded mansion and stepping into its garden maze in order to find Olivier’s detective novelist Andrew Wyke, whose voice beckons the newcomer. But Wyke is not calling for Tindle per se. He is actually dictating the ending of his most recent book—the newest adventure of sleuth St. John Lord Merrydew—into a tape recorder. With Wyke’s voice serving as a guiding light, Tindle stumbles through the maze but cannot manage to reach its center. It is then that Wyke reveals a secret entrance, hidden in the hedge. We don’t know it yet, but Sleuth’s very first scene serves as a prolepsis of sorts, cleverly foreshadowing from the get-go the power dynamics we are about to witness. Tindle is still blissfully unaware of the fact that he will spend the first half of the movie like a rat in a maze, marching to the beat of Wyke’s drum, being played like a puppet. And very conveniently so, for Wyke is quite literally obsessed with electronic puppets of all shapes and sizes (including, but not limited to, a life-size Jolly Jack Tar, the Jovial Sailor that claps his hands and laughs at the push of a hidden button), as well as creepy dolls and mysterious puzzles. His mansion, jam-packed with all of the above, is a testament to his obsession.
A character in its own right, the mansion quickly becomes a real battle-/playground, serving as both a backdrop and a witness to Wyke’s elaborate ploy. For Wyke, the game is simple: establish dominance over Tindle without him even realizing it, only to pull the proverbial rug right from under his feet, in order to induce a state of sheer humiliation in his rival. Humiliating another is, after all, the only way Wyke knows how to save face, because a man he considers to be “less than” managed to win over his soon-to-be ex-wife. That’s right, Tindle, a younger man with far less pedigree and even lesser amounts of money, is the reason Wyke is getting a divorce. One such defeat leads to feelings of humiliation, which threaten to catapult Wyke smack dab in the middle of a deep shame vortex. So, the only way Wyke is able to avoid feeling shame and regain any sense of control is to set the other guy up to feel the same way he feels. By humiliating another human being, Wyke gets to feel empowered again. And he does so in a way that provides him with the utmost enjoyment—by playing an elaborate game.
But what the wealthy author doesn’t count on, is that the ‘lesser’ man doesn’t do well with humiliation. What Wyke is blatantly unaware of, is the fact that he has met his match. The feelings that urged Wyke to try and get the upper hand are the same ones that become the driving force behind Tindle’s actions—the puppet becomes the puppeteer, the submissive becomes the dominant. The game that the two men play is a battle of wits and one-upmanship, as well as a test of endurance. Eventually, the question becomes not which one of them will crack, but rather who will crack first. And we have the privilege of being taken along for the ride. Granted the opportunity to test our own detective skills, we are invited to guess what the next plot twist will be and whether what we have been shown is a red herring or not. Some twists we very well may see coming (depending on how accustomed we are to the detective genre), others are surely going to take us by surprise, while the moments before the final reveal are meant to leave us on the edge of our seats. For there are clearly only two possible outcomes of this wicked game, both equally plausible. The question is only whether one player will choose to believe the words of the other—and whether we will do the same. In the end, there are no real winners. Just one man who had outsmarted the other at great personal cost. To us, it quickly becomes obvious that it was too high a cost to pay. To him, the cost was worth it. This makes the ending all the more chilling, for it depicts what a man is not only willing, but also glad to sacrifice in order to rise above the humiliation he was subjected to.
And yet, despite the plot of Sleuth being no laughing matter, the atmosphere that permeates Mankiewicz’s clever film is a unique blend of theatrical whimsy and tantalizing suspense. This juxtaposition of wit and tension is a fascinating one to experience, for it gives the film a very specific feeling flavor that lingers on in our psyche long after the end credits have rolled. The dialogue is sharp and abundant, never ceasing to be interesting and always managing to keep us on our toes—as well as the protagonists on theirs. The music is circus-like (score by the aforementioned Academy Award nominee John Addison), serving as the perfect backdrop to the character’s back-and-forth, which alternates between deadly seriousness and flamboyant elation. Olivier and Caine’s on-screen chemistry is rich and electric, making it impossible to look away as the two battle it out in Wyke’s mansion for the entirety of the movie.
In a 2002 interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Caine said that he would love to star in another version of the film, only this time around, he would want to play Olivier’s part, with Jude Law stepping into the shoes of Caine’s character Tindle. Six months later, American filmmaking company Castle Rock got the rights to the play and Nobel laureate Harold Pinter was commissioned to write the screenplay. Having never seen the original film, not a single line of dialogue from it ended up in this new version that neither the screenwriter nor the director (Kenneth Branagh) wanted to deem ‘a remake.’ This reimagined adaptation of Schaffer’s play sees Tindle as a struggling actor, while Wyke’s abode is not an eccentric’s playground in the style of an old English castle, filled with dolls, puzzles and trinkets, but a cold, high-tech mansion (in the words of Rachel Kendra, “a cold, postmodernist nightmare”) with a surveillance system that enables Wyke to exercise even more control over his younger rival. Because for Caine’s Wyke, a love of games takes a back seat to his obsession with control, which is further accentuated by an element that was absent from the 1972 version—a clear sexual tension between the two protagonists.
The original Sleuth received well-deserved critical acclaim and garnered multiple award nominations and wins. It was nominated for four BAFTAs and three Golden Globes and, apart from the three Oscar nods mentioned earlier, it also became the second ever film (after Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 1966) whose whole cast got a nomination—namely, Olivier and Caine. As connoted earlier, the extended cast list in the opening credits is the first of several red herrings we the viewers get exposed to throughout the film. We expect other characters to appear, but even when one such turn of events seems inevitable, our expectations get subverted and this never comes to pass. It has always been just Tindle and Wyke, dancing their captivating, twisted tango.
Koraljka Suton is a member of the Croatian Society of Film Critics and has a master’s degree in German and English. For her thesis, she did a comparative analysis of Spielberg’s ‘Band of Brothers’ and ‘The Pacific’. Koraljka trained at a Zagreb-based acting studio for six years and fell in love with Michael Chekhov and Lee Strasberg’s acting techniques. She is also a contemporary dancer and a Reiki master who believes in the transformative quality of art. Read more »
“The audience suffers from malnutrition. They go hoping for a full‐course meal and get snacks. Hold your plot until the last second. All plays don’t have to be tricky, but they have to be stuffed with goodies.”
—Anthony Shaffer
For Sleuth, Anthony Shaffer himself wrote one of the best screenplays in cinema history. The screenplay contains some of the richest and most elaborate dialogue that we have ever witnessed. This priceless screenplay was almost impossible to find. We turned over a thousand stones and finally managed to find it just for you, our loyal Cinephilia & Beyond readers. Enjoy.
A monumentally important screenplay. Screenwriter must-read: Anthony Shaffer’s screenplay for Sleuth [PDF]. (NOTE: For educational and research purposes only). The DVD/Blu-ray of the film is available at Amazon and other online retailers. Absolutely our highest recommendation.
A SLEUTHIAN JOURNEY WITH ANTHONY SHAFFER
Shaffer addresses an inviting assortment of topics: he elaborates on Stephen Sondheim’s influence on the play, his collaboration with stage actor Anthony Quayle, his encounter with Agatha Christie, his initial stance on the film, a pun game he played with director Mankiewicz, his initial sentiments toward casting, numerous anecdotes about Olivier, and a plethora of other topics. In general, Shaffer offers a plethora of engaging and exceptional notes.
The captivating video showcases Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine on the Sleuth set.
‘ALL ABOUT MANKIEWICZ’
Running 103 minutes and released in 1983, the special covers Makiewicz’s entire filmography, spanning 1946’s Dragonwyck to 1973’s Sleuth. It’s rare to get a director to expound on the entirety of their career at this length, so take this opportunity to watch a master talk about his craft. And with Mankiewicz responsible for classic films such as Guys and Dolls, Suddenly, Last Summer, and more infamously worked on the fiasco Cleopatra, this is definitely a must watch. —IndieWire
Here are several photos taken behind-the-scenes during production of Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Sleuth. Photographed by George Whitear © Palomar Pictures International, 20th Century Fox. Intended for editorial use only. All material for educational and noncommercial purposes only.
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