By Hank Reineke
Sidney Sheldon (1917-2007), the playwright, television
mogul, and novelist, reportedly sold well over 300 million books in his
lifetime. This is a pretty impressive number
for a man who only turned to churning out books in his early fifties. If I hedged on the word “writing†when
describing the mogul’s working methods, I’m not being coy and
disrespectful. Perhaps taking a page
from fellow television writer-creator-workaholic Rod Serling’s own playbook, Sheldon
would dictate his stories into a tape recorder and later have secretaries type
out his ramblings. With words committed
to paper, Sheldon would then skillfully revise and edit and buffer the
manuscript until satisfied he had a full-fledged novel on hand. Though a number of literary critics - and resentful
thriller-writing contemporaries - would excoriate the creator/writer of The Patty Duke Show and I Dream of Jeannie for his work method
and hackneyed storylines, readers worldwide made Sheldon one of the most
successful popular-market paperback novelists of all time.
One fan of Sheldon’s books was Roger Moore, also in the
midst of enjoying a great run of wealth and fame as James Bond. The actor would recall in his memoir My Word is My Bond, “Since first reading
Sidney Sheldon’s book The Naked Face
I had felt it would lend itself to a very good film.†Moore was interested in exploring new
projects; he was certain his sixth and most recent outing as Bond, Octopussy (1983), was likely his last. He was, after all, now fifty-seven years old. He could be forgiven for believing his
successful turn as British secret agent 007 had come to its natural end.
Several years prior to the cinema version of “The Naked
Face,†Moore was cast in “Sunday Lovers†(1980), a dismal romantic-comedy of four
vignettes tethered together as a feature-length film. The Franco-Italian production would be
released in the U.S. in the early winter of 1981. Though the film performed poorly at the
box-office on both sides of the Atlantic, critics agreed the movie’s first
tale, a distinctly British farce titled “An Englishman’s Home,†was clearly the
best of an otherwise bad bunch. The screenplay for this segment had been written
by the British playwright and lyricist Leslie Bricusse, and featured a talented
ensemble: Moore, Denholm Elliot, Lynn
Redgrave, and Priscilla Barnes. The
vignette was helmed with modest flourish by Bryan Forbes, a formidable figure
in the British film industry who had only recently stepped down as managing
director of EMI films. Moore enjoyed
working with the director on “Sunday Lovers†as Forbes, a true Renaissance man,
had been an old colleague. The two had been
friends since their earliest training together at the Royal Academy of Dramatic
Arts.
Around this same time a pair of Israeli nationals,
Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, became primary shareholders of Cannon Films, a floundering
company teetering on bankruptcy and desperate for well-heeled investors. The savvy cousins would quickly reinvigorate
the company’s fortunes in the 1980s with a profitable string of teen-horrors
and testosterone-fueled low-budget action B-films starring Charles Bronson and
Chuck Norris. In the interim of such
box-office successes as “Death Wish II†and the first of the “Missing in Actionâ€
films, the producers actively courted Moore for a possible collaboration. The interests of both parties converged when a
window of opportunity opened following the actor’s wrap of Octopussy. Moore’s suggestion
of Sidney Sheldon’s 1970 best-selling novel “The Naked Face†as a possible
project for Cannon was met with enthusiasm. The deal was sealed when the filmmakers agreed to green-light Moore’s
friend Bryan Forbes as director for the project. Golan and Globus announced production of “The
Naked Face†with customary Cannon ballyhoo at the Cannes International Film
Festival.
The premise of both the novel and film was classic
Hitchcock. A contemplative Chicago
psychiatrist, Dr. Judd Stevens (Roger Moore), becomes entangled as primary
suspect for a series of murders of which he is innocent and seems to have no
connection. As “The Naked Face†was clearly
targeted as entertainment for a sophisticated adult demographic, the producers
cast an impressive roster of middle-to-late-age talent. These were faces familiar to seasoned moviegoers: Rod Steiger, Anne Archer, Elliott Gould, and
Art Carney among them. The casting,
sadly, was not terribly profound. The
producers would cast veteran actor Rod Steiger as Moore’s foil, the
frothing-at-the-mouth, bulldog detective Lt. McGreavy. Steiger’s performance was certainly memorable. Unfortunately, it is memorable for all of the
wrong reasons. The most obvious problem with the actor’s
performance was, as Moore would later lament, Steiger did little to mitigate
his well-deserved reputation amongst his peers as a “scene chewer.†There’s plenty of that charge in evidence
here. The actor’s one-note portrayal is,
in turn, amusing and wearying. McGreavy comes off as a highly-caffeinated
Sgt. Joe Friday, ready to assign even the sketchiest shred of circumstantial
evidence as proof of Moore’s culpability in the murders. The detective’s dogged single-mindedness to
implicate the doctor is explained away as a result of the psychiatrist’s
testimony on behalf of a mentally unstable man who murdered his former police-partner
some years earlier. Elliott Gould is
cast as Angeli, McGreavy’s calmer and more reasonable contemporary partner. He is, seemingly, the better angel of this
traditional “good cop/bad cop†pairing. But
Gould is surprisingly unremarkable here, turning in a curiously flat and remote
performance. Art Carney plays Morgens, an
elderly, eccentric private investigator and collector of vintage clocks, who
briefly allies with Moore. Incredibly,
we’re expected to believe that the contemplative Dr. Stevens would engage this
low-rent private investigator through a listing in the Chicago Yellow Pages.
The original plan was to have the entirety of principal photography of “The Naked Face†wrapped within the parameter of a sensible twelve-week shooting schedule. But it wasn’t long after arriving in Chicago that the nervous penny-pinching and second guessing began. The shooting schedule was drastically slashed by a third almost immediately. The cast and crew were challenged to wrap up production over an eight-week period. One casualty of this reduction was the filmmaker’s inability to fully exploit the movie’s Chicago locales. There are no sweeping panoramic views of the city from above, nor even a single memorable static image of the windy city’s skyline photographed from the shoreline of Lake Michigan. If it weren’t for the occasional glimpse of the city’s iconic elevated railroad system or the distant black silhouette of the Sears Tower appearing dimly in the background, “The Naked Face†could have been set in practically any city of the modern world. Most of the film’s settings are in office suites, apartments, greasy-spoon restaurants, et.al. It’s all very claustrophobic and sadly adds to the film’s vibe as an unremarkable “Mystery Movie of the Week†television-film.
“The Naked Face†does feature several suspenseful moments, in particular a tense sequence where Moore is stalked in his own apartment complex by a pair of assassins. In contrast to most of Cannon’s slam-bang 1980s productions, this film is primarily a moderately-paced police procedural with few action elements. So much of the plotting here is not so much improbable as it is outrageously illogical. The danger that Moore will soon find himself in is made apparent from the very first sequence of the film. While solemnly visiting the grave of his wife and daughter – both killed in a car crash, perhaps of mysterious circumstance – the doctor is unknowingly fixed in the target-sight of an assassin’s rifle. He’s saved from his own assassination through an act of sheer serendipity. This is shortly followed by the fatal knifing of one of the doctor’s patients who, rather unluckily, found himself a target due to a case of simple mistaken identity. The poor man happened to be wearing a raincoat borrowed from the kind psychiatrist following a session. These early sequences – amongst several others – demonstrate that not only is Moore being stalked by a shadowy assassin, but that the string-pullers behind the plot clearly want him dead. The trail of bodies the killers leave in the wake of their near-misses clearly suggests they’re not interested in bringing the psychiatrist in for a chin-wag. If this is the case, however, one must wonder why the screenplay allows for several scenes where Moore is left alone with a certain character that turns out not what he seems. This “friend†would have needed only fire a single shot in seclusion to tidy up the unpleasant business once and for all. It’s all very baffling. In defense of “The Naked Face,†it’s really only after the movie has completely unspooled that we rationally sort it all out in our minds. The film does engage with a series of twists and turns and, unless one was familiar with the original Sheldon novel, the movie manages to keep the viewer guessing.
Though not “essential†by any stretch of the imagination, “The Naked Face†is an entertaining enough time-waster that would make a welcome addition to the video collections of Roger Moore fans and James Bond enthusiasts. A bare-bone Blu-Ray offering, the only extras present on this Kino-Lorber release are the film’s original theatrical trailer and a set of removable English-language subs for the hearing-impaired. It’s unfortunate that Kino, as an additional bonus, couldn’t have negotiated the audio rights of Moore’s abridged two-hour reading of the original Sheldon novel. Die-hard collectors will have to hang on to their two-cassette “Books on Tape†set (Dove/William Morrow, 1987) for the time being.
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