Movies You Might Have Missed: Sleuth

Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine are on fine form in this great British thriller

Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine in Sleuth

Identical twins the Shaffer brothers were undoubtedly two of the greatest screenwriters this country produced in the last century. Between them, they were responsible for the scripts for Frenzy, The Wicker Man, Black Comedy, Equus and Amadeus. In 1972, the legendary Joseph L. Mankiewicz directed the big screen version of Sleuth, an inspired adaptation of Anthony Shaffer’s Tony-Award winning play of the same name.

Shaffer was initially reluctant to sell the rights to his play since he feared it would undercut the stage show’s success. Despite writing the screenplay, his hopes of employing the actors who’d made the show such a hit were nipped in the bud when Mankiewicz insisted on casting Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine as the leads. The latter was so overcome to be working with his hero that the first thing he did was ask the veteran how he ought to address him.

Olivier replied: "Well I am the Lord Olivier and you are Mr Michael Caine. Of course that's only for the first time you address me. After that I am Larry and you are Mike.”

The plot seems simple at the outset but nothing is as it appears in Sleuth. Olivier’s Andrew Wyke, a hugely successful crime novelist, invites his wife’s lover Milo Tindle (Caine) over to his enormous country mansion. The house is filled with elaborate games but none quite so complex as the cat and mouse tussle that ensues between the pair. So begins an intellectual duel with shades of Agatha Christie (whose picture proudly hangs on Wyke’s wall) and a denouement every bit as surprising as the author at her very best.

The leads are magnificent; rarely has one-upmanship and toxic masculinity been so perfectly rendered on the big screen. This was Mankiewicz’s final film and it’s a far cry from his hit All About Eve. Set exclusively in one location, it would have been understandable if the action felt stagey and tired, yet the use of space is inspired and serves to aid the overall sense of claustrophobia.

The film was remade in 2007 with a screenplay by Harold Pinter, and with Caine taking over the role of Wyke opposite Jude Law. One can only hope this disappointing version compelled a few people to seek out the original and discover the true source of the line “A jumped-up pantry boy who never knew his place”, which later founds its way into the lyrics of The Smiths' classic 'This Charming Man'. It is little wonder Morrissey was drawn to this expert tale of class and machismo with so much to say about the attitudes of little Englanders; this is one of the great British thrillers.