Our travels through the films of Michael Caine bring us to a bit of an oddity: it’s 1983’s The Jigsaw Man. Let’s take a look…
Michael Caine showed no sign of slowing down as he entered his third decade as a leading man. The 1980s would see him win his first Academy Award (Hannah and Her Sisters), tackle new genres such as horror (The Hand) and shark-based revenge movie (Jaws: The Revenge) whilst continuing to work with interesting new auteurs like Brian De Palma (Dressed to Kill) as well as old friends from classic Hollywood such as John Huston (Escape to Victory).
Film by film, I’ll be taking a look at Caine’s 1980s filmography to see what hidden gems I can unearth alongside the more familiar classics…
Spoilers for The Jigsaw Man lie ahead…
Directed by:
Terence Young (Dr. No, From Russia with Love, Thunderball, Wait Until Dark)
Tagline:
The Game of Spying, Double Cross, Defection, Betrayal and Death
Other Featured Geezers:
Laurence Olivier as Admiral Sir Gerald Scaith, Susan George as Penelope Kimberley, Robert Powell as Jamie Fraser, Charles Gray as Sir James Chorley, Vladek Sheybal as General Zorin.
What’s it all about, Alfie?:
Phillip Kimberley, the former head of Britain’s Secret Service who defected to Russia many years ago, is bored and making a nuisance of himself in the Soviet Union (getting drunk at official functions, kissing ministers, peeing on tables). So, to make use of their now problematic asset, the beleaguered Russians fake his death, give him enforced plastic surgery to make him look like a completely different man (who happens to be the spitting image of Michael Caine) and ship him back to Blighty to retrieve an important dossier that Kimberley hid there containing information on Russian agents. However, once back in London, Kimberley escapes the clutches of his Russian handlers and appears to be defecting back to the West. Is this a double cross, a triple cross, or even a quadruple cross?!?
Soon his estranged daughter Penelope (Susan George) and his former colleague, now head of MI6, Gerald Scaith (Laurence Olivier) become embroiled and it all ends with an unexpected day trip to Woburn Safari Park (seriously that is the film’s third act, you see monkeys and a giraffe, bet you’re sold now!).
Caine-ness:
Caine is first-billed and lead of the film. It does briefly seem after the opening that Jamie Fraser, the Bond-esque spy character that Robert Powell is playing, is going to become our main character but thankfully he is quickly sidelined and Caine becomes the focus again.
I was admittedly confused when, within the first few minutes of the film, we hear Caine’s distinctive voice coming out of the mouth of actor Richard Aylen playing Phillip Kimberley pre-makeover. I wasn’t familiar with Aylen, and he appears to have had something done to his face, either to make him look a bit more like Caine or to look older (if he hadn’t, and this is just how he looks, I sincerely apologise), and so I genuinely wasn’t certain until I looked it up afterwards if this was Caine dubbing another actor (it was) or if it was Caine himself in some very effective makeup.
Judging by the obviously limited budget of the film, I should have clocked it was definitely the former much sooner.
Kimberley is meant to be 62 and the plastic surgery that makes him look like Michael Caine (who plays Kimberley in body as well as voice throughout the rest of the film) allegedly makes him appear about twenty years younger as his new passport says that he is 42 (which is generous to Caine who was pushing 50 when he made this).
When Kimberley is pretending to be Russian, he puts on a dodgy accent that is part Aleksandr the Meerkat and part Borat. I’m going to give Caine the benefit of the doubt and say that this is a creative choice and it is Kimberley, the character, who is bad at doing accents and not Caine the actor. He also pretends to be American to get out of a parking fine (which somehow works despite the horrendous accent).
Like all the best 1980s movies, The Jigsaw Man has an obligatory training montage where, in a tiny unimpressive gym, Kimberley (newly moustachioed) in an eye-catching red tracksuit top goes on an exercise bike, does some karate chopping, lifts his legs up and down a bit whilst hanging off a wall fixture and gives a punching bag a good smack. It’s less Rocky, more Rosemary Conley’s All New Hip and Thigh Workout.
I may have scoffed, but his karate chop comes in handy later when he apprehends a policeman and accidentally kills a publican who is going to snitch on him. Kimberley’s hands are lethal weapons thanks to his Russian Couch to 5K training sesh (the K stands for killing).
He also takes being shot in his stride. It’s nighttime when he gets hit but it’s not until the following day that he receives any treatment. He appears to have been bleeding profusely since then but is walking it off like a trooper. However, it does leave him with some lasting injuries as he keeps touching his side and holding himself like he’s a little teapot.
Kimberley may be a lethal cold-blooded spy but he does drive around in his daughter’s car which happens to be the same make and colour as Mr Bean’s which does somewhat detract from his mystique. I thought this car was green but Fraser describes it as yellow, I didn’t expect this to be how I found out that either myself or Robert Powell were colourblind, but there you go, life works in mysterious ways.
Also, Kimberley may know state secrets but he seems befuddled by general haircare products. “What do women use to change the colour of their hair?” he tentatively asks his daughter like it’s some sort of alchemy only known to female folk, and not something he can just find out by popping down to Boots.
Caine is fine in this role, it’s not his finest hour, but there’s enough charm and energy in his performance to keep you invested in his underdeveloped character. More could have been made of Kimberley’s duplicitous past and the way that he’s betrayed his daughter, friends and country but it’s glossed over. He’s basically just forgiven and treated like an unproblematic hero for most of the film. When injured during the climax he does profoundly confess that “War is bad” so I suppose that shows that he’s learnt his lesson and we can all just move on now.
Caine’s best bit of acting is how long he manages to faff around with a breakfast sausage before eating it, clearly so that he doesn’t have to eat multiple sausages during re-takes; “Good god. Bangers. How I’ve missed them.” he says gesturing with the aforementioned banger, really savouring it.
He’s holding this lightly nibbled sausage for about half of the scene whilst he emotionally reconnects with his daughter Penelope (which I can’t focus on because I just want to know when he’ll finish the damn sausage).
Caine-nections*:
The last time that Caine played a spy was in 1974 with The Black Windmill. Before that it was his 1960’s Harry Palmer trilogy.
This is the third James Bond director that Caine has worked with after Guy Hamilton (Funeral In Berlin (1966) and Battle of Britain (1969)) and Lewis Gilbert (Alfie (1966) and Educating Rita (1983)).
Laurence Olivier had previously appeared in Battle of Britain (1969), A Bridge Too Far (1977) and most memorably Sleuth (1972) which was a two-hander between just him and Caine.
Vladek Sheybal is also a frequent former co-star having appeared in The Last Valley (1971), Deadfall (1968) and Billion Dollar Brain (1967).
Susan George also popped up Billion Dollar Brain early in her career as everyone’s favourite character; “Russian Girl on a Train”.
Charles Gray had another scene stealing supporting turn in Silver Bears (1977).
Robert Powell had a small, less smug and less annoying, role in The Italian Job (1969).
*I’m only counting from Caine’s first starring role in Zulu onwards.
Isn’t it Awkward When You End up Looking Like your Artwork?
Best Non-Caine Actor:
I was shocked when we first see Laurence Olivier as Secret Service head Gerald Scaith at how old and frail he looked. He wasn’t even instantly recognisable to me as Olivier. He had been suffering on and off with ill health for over a decade and would pass away not many years later in 1989. However, there’s still a lot of energy to his performance. He takes over the shouty pointy acting mantle from Caine, who gives a more subdued performance, as a cantankerous “M” type. It’s fun to see him say things such as “my arse” and other such lines that are more Ricky Tomlinson than William Shakespeare like “means less than a fart in a blizzard”. I also really enjoyed the way he kept saying “Ruskies”. It’s sad to see Olivier so clearly fading but there’s also genuine fun to be had from this performance too.
The best character, and performance, is Charles Gray as Sir James Chorley, the camp and pompous double agent who has “four wigs, different lengths, change them every week to look like I need a trim”. He livens up proceedings whenever he’s on screen.
Susan George is fine, though unremarkable, in the undemanding role of Kimberley’s daughter Penelope but I found Robert Powell annoying as the young hotshot spy who is dating her. I think Powell was going for a Bond-esque brusque macho charm (we even see Powell doing his own gun barrel sequence in the end credits!) but he just comes across as smarmy and his flirty banter simply makes him seem like a bit of a dick.
My Bleedin’ Thoughts:
Objectively this is not a good film but, to my shame, I actually had fun with it as a piece of camp nonsense. Looking at reviews I am definitely in the minority of getting any enjoyment from it whatsoever, but I ask you, how many films climax with a shootout at Woburn Safari Park monkey enclosure whilst Caine is dressed as a priest? As far as I’m aware, only this one (but admittedly I haven’t seen Little Voice) and that was enough for me to count this overall as a worthwhile watch.
This film was based on a novel by Dorothea Bennett (the former wife of director Terence Young) which was in turn inspired by the real-life notorious spy Kim Philby. It had a troubled production which saw filming shut down due to financial difficulties before further money was eventually secured allowing the picture to complete on a reduced scale. Then it didn’t even get a cinema release in the UK, instead going straight to video two years after the film was completed.
This explains the general televisual feel of the movie and why the quality of the streaming copy is so bad and in 4:3 aspect ratio. The production issues also likely explain the odd pacing and drably unglamourous locations that the film was shot in. But nothing can justify the truly terrible score which feels like an 1980s game show at times. I have no idea what mood or tone it was trying to evoke, but the only thing it managed to cause for me was bewilderment.
This was a sad twilight to the career of Terence Young, the director who kicked off the Bond franchise. He only made one film after this, Run For Your Life (1988), a David Carradine starring B-movie that ominously has no reviews on IMDB.
He’s not the only prestigious crewmember slumming it here as fellow Bond director Peter R Hunt (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service) was second unit director and the film’s director of photography was Freddie Francis (whose cinematography has been acclaimed on films such as The Innocents (1961), The Elephant Man (1980) and Cape Fear (1991))
Even poor unassuming Dionne Warwick was dragged into this mess to sing an original romantic ballad, Only You and I, over the end credits which is clearly not appropriate for the tone of the preceding movie (which doesn’t really feature much romance) and was clearly just an attempt to go for a Shirley Bassey type Bond theme because of the film’s many Bond connections.
I feel like I’ve been quite negative but I will admit to liking the poster (which features a literal jigsaw man) and everything that happened at Woburn safari park (whether it was intentionally entertaining or not).
This included Fraser’s car windscreen being completely shot out to the extent that there is no glass left and the nearby gamekeeper that he confronts about this straight facedly saying “could be a giraffe keeper” or “a stone” or “some people up to shooting the squirrels today”.
This plot thread is then not followed up on. I still have no idea what happened there and if it was a giraffe keeper or not. Then, not long after, there’s a medium speed car chase around the safari park (not quite as exciting as it sounds) ending in a crash in the monkey enclosure. It genuinely was not something I expected to see when I started this movie.
Trivia (Courtesy of IMDB):–
The riverside night walk was filmed in Strand-On-The Green, Chiswick, outside the home of Donald Pleasence. I can only assume because Caine had beef with his former co-star and wanted to annoy him.
-Apparently Kim Philby was not happy that a character based on him was being played by Michael Caine as he considered himself more of a Trevor Howard type. Well, that’s what you get for committing treason Philby, suck it up.
-The safari park where this was filmed is now Legoland Windsor. For anyone visiting, please spare a thought for the late monkeys that had to go through the ordeal of watching The Jigsaw Man being filmed in their place of residence.
Overall Thoughts:
A technically rubbish, but fun if you’re in the right frame of mind (i.e. inebriated), Bond movie on a budget with a karate chopping Michael Caine getting into a shoot-em-up at a safari park with Charles Gray whilst monkeys look on. What more can you ask for?
Rating:
3/5 Breakfast Sausages *
*Admittedly this is a very generous rating
Where You Can Watch This:
This is currently streaming on Amazon Freevee or is available to purchase on DVD in the UK.
Up Next:
In time for Halloween, I’ll be looking at arguably one of Caine’s most horrifying films; the sex farce Blame it on Rio.
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