Jigsaw

Ladies, beware of door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesmen. As if presaging the “Law & Order” television phenomenon that began in the late 20th century, the clinical police procedural qualities of Val Guest’s noir drama Jigsaw, especially when juxtaposed with the gruesomeness of the central crime, establish an incongruous ordinariness around the investigation that somehow keeps the viewer on edge throughout. Inspired by true events, and opening with a fabulous, music-free sequence in which Joan Simpson (Moira Redmond) declares her affections for her soon-to-be-murderer whose face and voice are concealed from us, Jigsaw stars the excellent Jack Warner and Ronald Lewis as detective partners Fred Fellows and Jim Wilks, respectively, who lead the investigation into Simpson’s murder after discovering her dismembered body in a trunk in the basement of a house near Brighton which had been rented by a man using a false identity. Taking place almost entirely in daylight, the film emphasizes detection and deduction but inserts plenty of tense and/or creepy scenes, such as when the (still faceless and voiceless) murderer flirts with another victim aboard a train, when the camera pans to expose photos of women tacked to the suspect’s wall during an interrogation, and when the detectives reveal to Jean Sherman (Yolande Donlan) how close she came to being butchered. The film’s craftsmanship is clean and polished if not particularly innovative, and Guest makes effective use of flashbacks, dissolves, and jump cuts for seamless continuity.