Word: wyke
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Agatha Christie, but even ignoring its dubious dramatic value, the form was always limited. Having exhausted all possible realistic variations, it is not surprising that the thriller playwright has had to turn the form in on itself, self-consciousness being the last available twist. The character of Andrew Wyke, the bigoted, infantile, impotent detective novelist in Anthony Shaffer's Sleuth, was the logical culmination of the mystery-writer's view of himself in a world where such structured escapism has become frustratingly antiquated. It was an opportunistic out for Shaffer, himself a writer of second-rate mysteries, but Sleuth...
Deathtrap is not the ingenious successor to Sleuth that Levin obviously wanted to write, but a desperate imitation of it. The same sorts of turn-arounds preponderate, and the playwright-protagonist, Sidney Bruhl (John Wood), as unscrupled as Wyke when it comes to murder, speaks in similarly sardonic conceits. But Levin, although he tries hard, has neither Shaffer's command of language nor his ability to make each epigram peculiarly illustrative of some aspect of character; Levin uses witticisms to fill pauses. To be fair, the script contains many very funny lines--assorted theater jokes, ESP jokes...
SCHAFFER'S CRITICISM of Wyke, and, by inference, of the Golden Age, misses its mark. Perhaps making a mystery writer a real-life criminal is too easy on a irony. For the most part, the analysis stays on a personal level, where it is compounded by the issues of cuckoldry and class hatred. Many of Wyke's speeches represent Schaffer's view of aristocratic thought in general, while the real interest of the film lies in Wyke's relationship to the sort of books he writes. The details, like Wyke's all-white jigsaw puzzle or his fondness...
...altogether certain and the players begin to act almost like characters from the great detective stories. Inspector Doppler's dress and speech mark him, not as a simple stereotype, but as a real detective who is cautiously aware of past mystery movies and books. The interplay between Doppler and Wyke features fine acting and psychological suspense that's effective even if you've already figured out the plot...
...themselves, making another character and providing relief from the constant dialogue. He was wrong, as many critics have been quick to point out. But his idea is still effective, to my mind, not because it makes an extra person but because the living room filled with lively figures extends Wyke's character into the complex fantasy of his fiction. Like Wyke's books, the automata are by no means puerile, though both belong to the realm of extended childhood...