Film review: Sleuth (1972)

I bought this on DVD a while ago because we were talking about it and discovered it is one of those rare films that you can't even stream on Amazon. And yesterday Jami said we should watch it, so we did.  It's based on a play by Anthony Shaffer, whom I thought was the writer of Equus and Amadeus, but that's his brother Peter (with whom he co-wrote three detective novels - thank you Wikipedia), but who actually wrote the classic British folk-horror film The Wicker Man.  It's funny to discover that Shaffer wrote detective novels, because the Laurence Olivier character in this, who is thoroughly loathsome, is a detective writer whose detective, St. John Lord Merridew, is a parody of the Lord Peter Wimsy-style toff sleuth school of fiction.  But it makes sense, given that there are several twists and turns in this that obviously are more loving references to the genre.  It is a credit to the production that only at the end do you realize that there have never been more than two people on screen at any one time, and in fact [SPOILER]

...it's the same two people.  I say spoiler, even though it's pretty patently obvious that the "Detective Doppler" (above) who shows up about halfway through, despite being credited to one "Alec Cawthorne" in the credits, is actually Michael Caine in brown contacts, a wig and a fat suit, doing a remarkably creditable Wiltshire yokel accent.  This is the second of the major twists, or possibly third.  The film opens with Caine's Milo Tindle showing up to Olivier's Andrew Wyke's fancy Wiltshire estate and struggling to locate Wyke in the center of his ornamental maze (the first of Wyke's profusion of puzzles and games that we encounter) where he is dictating the denouement of Merridew's latest adventure.  It turns out that the maze is impossible unless you know the secret rotating section of hedge, an early clue that Wyke is a nasty cheat.  After some badinage that reveals that each man is more or less contemptuous of the other, Wyke reveals that he knows that Tindle has been sleeping with his wife and in fact expects him to demand that he be able to marry her.  He claims that he has no objection, because he'd rather be with his Finnish mistress Tea, only that he doubts Tindle can afford to keep his wife, since, although he owns two hair salons, one in London, the other Brighton, neither is profitable yet.  So he suggests a solution: Tindle steal some very expensive jewels that Wyke bought to circumvent Britain's draconian tax laws (see the Beatles' Taxman) which he can fence in Amsterdam (to a fence Wyke met while researching one of his books) while Wyke collects the insurance.  Of course, they have to make the theft convincing, so Wyke gives Tindle a clown costume, and there is some amusing business of a clown-clad Caine struggling to climb a ladder. 

But after Caine has the jewels, Wyke insists that they fight to make it more convincing, and then finally reveals that the true purpose is to give him cover for shooting Tindle and escape prosecution because he was defending his house against an intruder.  He puts his gun (which has already fired two bullets at pictures in the room) up against the whimpering Milo's head and pulls the trigger, and Milo falls down, dead.

Or is he?  We cut to Wyke making himself a late-night snack when the bell rings and Inspector Doppler arrives.  It is, we learn, about three days later, and Doppler claims to be investigating Tindle's disappearance.  We expect Wyke to lie, but in fact he describes everything that happens, whereupon we learn that Milo wasn't dead, only in a dead faint, because Wyke's real purpose was just to humiliate him, and the third bullet in his gun was a blank.  But Doppler is unconvinced and soon has Wyke seriously panicking that he's going to be hauled off for murder.  It's then that Milo reveals that he is Doppler.  But that's not enough for his revenge on Wyke: he also reveals that, while setting up various plants in Wyke's house (such as his (Milo's) clothes in Wyke's closet, that Wyke swore Milo walked off in) the day before, Tea came round, and after "screwing" her, he, Milo strangled her, and has hidden incriminating clues around the house and told the police to meet him there, because he suspects that Wyke has murdered his mistress.  Thus begins the nastiest part of the film.

I must say, while I was absorbed, I am torn about this film.  I didn't like either character that much.  We are supposed to hate Wyke, but by the end he's a pathetic figure.  We want Milo to get revenge, but he goes too far.  BUT: both principals are exceptional, and if I had to pick the superior it would be Caine, who does not appear in the least overawed by the great Sir Larry.  He does have the showier role, particularly as he gets to play Doppler as well.  Did Olivier play anyone likeable in his later years?  At least he isn't a Nazi in this one, I suppose.