The original play by Anthony Shaffer opened with Anthony Quayle and Keith
Baxter in the lead roles in 1970 before running for some 1200 plus performance in Broadway also with Quayle in the lead with Patrick MacNee
taking over later. It was followed rapidly by the 1972 film directed by Joseph
Mankiewicz with Laurence Olivier and Michael Caineto the writer's own script.. The plot is simple - a games loving best selling mystery writer persuades his wife's young lover to visit him in his country house, purportedly to discuss a divorce but he then plays a self-devised game with him.
The film is set in a traditionally styled house (Athelhampton in reality) with all the expected appurtenances of a rich country gentleman's life. The stage origins are emphasised by the opening shots which move in from a proscenium surround into the house's grounds. Olivier displays his usual run of histrionic tricks and funny voices in something of a virtuoso display to which Caine as a half-Italian up-and-coming fashionable hairdresser responds in a much less flashy style - rather Harry Palmerish with emotion. This was Mankiewicz's last film and it does nothing to damage his reputation with few wasted shots and scenes, the two hours plus passing effortlessly in what is very much only a slightly opened out version of the stage play: effortless directing and excellent acting together give the film a high rating. Kenneth Branagh remade the play in 2007 with a script by Harold Pinter with
Michael Caine again, this time in the role of the writer and Jude Law in the role taken by Caine in the first film. Still set in a country house but this one with an ultra-modern interior designed by the wife and with far less emphasis on games. The main differences are, firstly, the debasing of the language
to the extent that at times it seemed that evry other word was either 'f...ing'
or 'c...', completely unnecessarily, secondly, that Law is now an out-of-work
actor who also does hairdressing and, thirdly and most importantly from a
cinematic point of view, Branagh seems to have discovered that cameras can
be angled to record scenes or part scenes from ridiculous angles, none of
which are in the last way helpful to developing or understanding the plot.
With Caine's non-theatrical background, his role is far less histrionic than the
Olivier one and Law again shows that, pace 'Alfie', he should not essay repeats of roles previously played by Caine. Seeing the two films back to back (though the earlier one seen second was skop-watched) makes for the
comparisons suggested but the more recent film has moved sufficiently away
from the play that it is almost a different story and deserves to be considered
in isolation, hard though this is to do (how does one dismiss memories).
Of the two, the former is the better film even with Olivier and the latter would
be a better one than it is, even with Law, if Branagh had restrained himself