Sleuth is a 1972 mystery thriller film directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. The screenplay by British playwright Anthony Shaffer was based on his 1970 Tony Award-winning play Sleuth. The film stars Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine, both of whom were nominated for an Academy Award for their performance. This was Mankiewicz's final film. (A remake Sleuth was released in 2007 starring Michael Caine (in the role previously taken by Olivier and Jude Law.)
Andrew Wyke (Laurence Olivier), a successful writer of crime fiction, who lives in a large country manor house filled with elaborate games and automata, invites his wife's lover Milo Tindle (Michael Caine), a hairdresser of Italian heritage and a lover of detective stories, to his home to discuss the situation. The plot swings from one side to another as each of these clever men gains the upper hand . . . for a while. The film is a masterpiece of clear directing and real-time narrative.
Director: Joseph Mankiewicz (adapted from Wikipedia Click Here)
Joseph Leo Mankiewicz (1909 - 1993) was a film director, screenwriter, and producer. Mankiewicz had a long Hollywood career, and twice won the Academy Award for both Best Director and Best Writing, Screenplay, for A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and All About Eve (1950).
Joseph Mankiewicz was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania to Franz Mankiewicz (died 1941) and Johanna Blumenau, immigrants from Germany. He had a sister, Erna and a brother, Herman who became a screenwriter. Herman also won an Oscar for co-writing Citizen Kane (1941).
At age four, Mankiewicz moved with his family to New York City where he graduated in 1924 from Stuyvesant High School. In 1928, he obtained a bachelor's degree from Columbia University. For a time he worked in Berlin, Germany, as a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune newspaper before entering the motion picture business.