Sleuth
Joseph Mankiewicz
Andrew Wyke, a very wealthy and aristocratic British detective novel author, invites Milo Tindle, a London hairdresser, to his home. Obsessed with deception and enigmas, and poorly hiding his contempt for the man who he knows is having an affair with his wife, the writer makes his young rival a very strange proposition...
With : Laurence Olivier, Michael Caine, Alec Cawthorne
Screenplay : Anthony Schaffer d'après sa pièce
Image : Oswald Morris
Decors : Ken Adam
Music : John Addison
Editing : Richard Marden
Screenplay : Anthony Schaffer d'après sa pièce
Image : Oswald Morris
Decors : Ken Adam
Music : John Addison
Editing : Richard Marden
Production : Morton Gottlieb, Palomar Pictures Ltd
Distribution: Connaissance du Cinéma
Distribution: Connaissance du Cinéma
Mankiewicz's final film, Sleuth, constitutes a summary of his style, here reduced to its essentials: an intrigue of mathematical rigour, a merciless joust between members of opposing social classes, cruel and refined theatrical entertainment, a labyrinthine plot based on a succession of surprises, counter-attacks, humiliations and betrayals (...). Faithful to Anthony Schaffer's play, Sleuth nonetheless belongs wholly to its director and reveals each of his obsessions: the taste and the illusion of power, the perverse pleasure of intellectual domination, the haunting absence of the woman one loves" (O. Eyquem).