Sleuth (Ws) by Joseph L. Mankiewicz at DVD Hills.com

Sleuth (Ws)

Sleuth (Ws)
by Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Our Price: $100.00
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $38.98 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD details

Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada

DVD details

Actor: Alec Cawthorne, Eve Channing, John Matthews, Laurence Olivier, Michael Caine
Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Cinematographer: Oswald Morris
Editor: Richard Marden
Producer: David Middlemas
Producer: Edgar J. Scherick
Producer: Morton Gottlieb
Writer: Anthony Shaffer
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); Italian (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 138 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-02-05
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Starz / Anchor Bay

DVD Reviews of Sleuth (Ws)

DVD Review: Come into my parlour(1972 version)
Summary: 5 Stars

Saw this film so many years ago and was entranced by it then coming as it does from a remarkably well crafted stage play,by one of our best playwrights,Anthony Shaffer.What really draws you in is the battle of wits between the older,more erudite,class conscious gentleman Andrew Wyke(Olivier),whose games-playing hides his snobbery against those like Milo Tyndale(Michael Caine),from poorer back grounds,who betray their non-Englishness,and lack of ability to match Wyke in gamesmanship.Tyndale is perceived as a social-climbing, wop hairdresser,who steals other men's wives. Olivier plays a famous author of detective stories who plans to out wit his wife's lover by inviting him to his country house where he emulates his own fictional hero.He appeals to his vanity by roping him into a plausible scheme of a robbery from his house safe to enrich them both.He really wants to humiliate him.

What really had me watching was the contrast in acting styles between Olivier and Caine.Olivier coming from a great tradition of stage acting, playing Henry V,Othello,Richard III,Hamlet and Lear,transferring them to film and then going on to do parts in cinema like Heathcliffe,act in Marathon Man as a Nazi or a detective in Bunny Lake is Missing.Caine,the young new talent in British cinema with Zulu,Alfie,Harry Palmer ,The Italian Job and Get Carter. His acting was hard-boiled,down-to-earth,suave,well tailored to an inarticulate,yet good-looking modernity.Caine's acting was basically playing himself,a form of non-acting.A contrast then between the verbose,athletic and animated Olivier,with all his capacity for nuance,subtlety,emotion,and Caine's taciturnity,playing shallow, aggressive,hedonists.Caine was put on his guard straight away,pitting his acting chops against the man most ennobled in his professionalism.The film lives up to this with Olivier playing with all the animus and bile of Richard III,condescending to Caine's apprentice learner,whose previous greatest lines-"You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!"-do not prepare for him turning the tables on the Master,especially his Inspector Doppler.

I loved the energetic use of the stage set,the moving puppets, the swirling toys,the laughing man who seems to make his victim laugh on the wrong side of their face.That these two hold one's attention for the best part of 2.5 hours is remarkable.The directing extraordinary by Mankeiwitz and the screenplay by Shaffer.These two actors were made to play opposite each other in a way never done before and never seen since.Brilliant fun in a stage house full of props,costumes,eccentric toys and stuffed animals,not forgetting the maze.An ingenious detective thriller combines suspense and surprise with a witty burlesque of the genre itself.

DVD Review: Fantastic, including the brilliant but underrecognized performance
Summary: 5 Stars

of Alec Cawthorne in a supporting, but pivotal, role. It is simply a shame that this actor's subsequent career is shrouded in obscurity.

DVD Review: Master Thespians
Summary: 2 Stars

There's always been a great deal of love for this 1972 Joseph L. Mankiewicz film, both because it is a throwback to the great stage thrillers of the past (of which it is almost a pastiche) and because Laurence Olivier has such a high time of things as Andrew Wyke, the mystery-writer who matches wits with his wife's lover and rolls his consonants around with great brio. While there's a certain undeniable pleasure in hearing how Olivier repeatedly rolls the words "St. John, Lord Merridew" around his lips and tongue, his performance is too rococo to be enjoyable for very long; he begins after a while to sound like Jon Lovitz's Saturday Night Live parody of him as "Master Thespian." Michael Caine does much better in his role as the wife's lover, which allows him some excellent variation and subtlety. The movie is very stagey, and relies on some ridiculous implausibilities (such as that Caine's character would ever agree to Olivier's initial scheme to steal the wife's jewels to defraud the insurance company), and all the pleasure the film allows is its famous big twist, which does surprise almost everyone who sees it for the first time, but which isn't enough on which to hang an entire movie. The play explicitly (and unpleasantly) links male sexual potency with the ability to play tricks on others--which would seem to position Anthony Shaffer, the writer of the screenplay as well as of the original stage thriller on which this is based, as a paragon of manhood (which is the constant obsession of the Olivier character). But after the film's big surprises are spent, you realize the whole thing is pretty limp and unimpressive.

DVD Review: Sleuth
Summary: 5 Stars

This is must see for those interested in the twists & turns of the whodunnit genre. Prefer this version over the modern version with Michael Caine (playing Laurence Oliviers' original role)and Jude Law. Why do film-makers always have to force homosexual scenes into good movies?

The vendor I bought from was excellent to deal with.

DVD Review: 3.5 stars out of 4
Summary: 4 Stars

The Bottom Line:

A fine showcase of actors at the top of their games and a clever mystery, Sleuth is a little long but a fantastically enjoyable movie: rent it!

Description of Sleuth (Ws)

Wicked, nasty, delicious fun. Laurence Olivier is a wealthy, veddy English mystery writer. He invites Michael Caine to his elaborate country house, in order to settle some rather unpleasant business between them: Caine is having an affair with Olivier's wife, and she is about to divorce the older man. Olivier, smooth as brandy, suggests that there might be a way the two men can help each other, but what appears to be an intriguing proposition escalates into a deadly cat-and-mouse game. Sleuth boasts a twisty script by Anthony Shaffer, calculated to drive an audience to distraction; and director Joseph L. Mankiewicz (All About Eve) shows a keen eye for the telling detail. But the real fun is watching Olivier and Caine go at each other hammer and tongs, a virtuoso wrestling match between two splendid actors (both were Oscar-nominated, but lost to Marlon Brando in The Godfather). Alec Cawthorne is also quite good as the inquisitive inspector on the case. --Robert Horton

DVD Video

Bestsellers in DVD

Rush - Beyond the Lighted Stage [2 DVD]
Release date: 2010-06-29; DVD
Best price: $14.73
Price in other shops: ~~$19.98~~

True Blood: The Complete Second Season (HBO Series)
HBO HOME VIDEO; Release date: 2010-05-25; DVD
Best price: $27.00
Price in other shops: ~~$59.99~~

Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief
TCFHE; Release date: 2010-06-29; DVD
Best price: $11.78
Price in other shops: ~~$29.99~~

Alice in Wonderland
BUENA VISTA HOME VIDEO; Release date: 2010-06-01; DVD
Best price: $9.50
Price in other shops: ~~$29.99~~

Avatar - The Last Airbender: The Complete Book 3 Collection
PARAMOUNT HOME VIDEO; Release date: 2008-09-16; DVD
Best price: $26.48
Price in other shops: ~~$55.98~~

Avatar The Last Airbender - The Complete Book 2 Collection
PARAMOUNT HOME VIDEO; Release date: 2007-09-11; DVD
Best price: $22.99
Price in other shops: ~~$55.98~~

Jillian Michaels - 30 Day Shred
MICHAELS,JILLIAN; Release date: 2008-03-18; DVD
Best price: $6.21
Price in other shops: ~~$14.98~~

P90X Extreme Home Fitness Workout Program - 13 DVDs, Nutrition Guide, Exercise Planner Image

P90X Extreme Home Fitness Workout Program - 13 DVDs, Nutrition Guide, Exercise Planner
Beachbody; Beachbody; Sports
Best price: $139.80
Price in other shops: ~~$150.00~~

Avatar (Two-Disc Blu-ray/ DVD Combo) [Blu-ray]
TCFHE; Release date: 2010-04-22; Blu-ray
Best price: $18.55
Price in other shops: ~~$39.99~~

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
SOUTHPORT MUSIC BOX CORPO; Release date: 2010-07-06; DVD
Best price: $15.49
Price in other shops: ~~$29.95~~

Similar DVDs, VHS Video, Audio CDs

Laurel & Hardy II (Way Out West / Block-Heads / Chickens Come Home)
Release date: 2005-03-15; DVD
Best price: $84.48

Dark Passage (Keepcase)
BOGART,HUMPHREY; Release date: 2006-07-25; DVD
Best price: $7.23
Price in other shops: ~~$19.98~~

Shadowlands
Release date: 1999-04-13; DVD
Best price: $82.00

Nights of Cabiria - Criterion Collection
Image Entertainment; Release date: 1999-09-07; DVD
Best price: $75.00

A Cry in the Dark
STREEP,MERYL; Release date: 1999-12-21; DVD
Best price: $2.99
Price in other shops: ~~$9.98~~

SLEUTH / (PAL DVD / IMPORT) 1972
DVD
Best price: $21.99

The Hunchback of Notre Dame
LAUGHTON,CHARLES; Release date: 1998-01-06; DVD
Best price: $9.04
Price in other shops: ~~$19.98~~

Sleuth: A Play (Playscript, 46)
by Anthony Shaffer
Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd; Published: 2000-07-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.01
Price in other shops: ~~$13.95~~