"Jigsaw" is sometimes said to be based upon the Brighton Trunk Murders which occurred in 1934. (Not, as one reviewer says, in the 1920s). This, however, does not appear to be the case. Beyond the Brighton setting and the fact that the body is discovered in a trunk, the crime committed in this film has little in common with those two killings, both of which were still regarded as unsolved in 1962. (One was solved in the seventies when the killer made a belated confession). The facts have more in common with those of another murder committed in a Sussex seaside resort, that of Emily Kaye by Patrick Mahon in Eastbourne in 1924, but in fact the main source for the film was a fictional one, the novel "Sleep Long, My Love" by the American crime writer Hillary Waugh, with the setting changed from Connecticut to Brighton.
The film opens with the killing of a woman by a man. We know the motive for the crime; she was his mistress, and wanted to him to leave his wife for her because she was pregnant. We do not, however, learn either party's true identity and do not see the man's face. We are initially led to believe that his name is "John Campbell", but it soon becomes clear that this is a pseudonym.
The Brighton CID are called in to investigate a break-in at an estate agent's office in the town centre. At first sight this appears to have been a minor crime, with nothing of any value taken, but their investigations take them to a house in the village of Saltdean, a few miles outside the town, where they stumble upon the body of the woman killed in the opening scene. The rest of the film is a police procedural, showing how the detectives put together the pieces of a metaphorical "jigsaw" to establish the identity of the dead woman and the identity and whereabouts of her killer and to collect the evidence which will prove his guilt. As might be expected, there are a couple of false leads.
The police officer leading the investigation, Detective Inspector Fred Fellows, is played by Jack Warner, regarded at the time as Britain's favourite policeman. Warner had created the character of PC George Dixon in "The Blue Lamp" in 1950. Dixon was killed by a young thug in that film, but the character proved so popular that he was revived and given his own television series, "Dixon of Dock Green", which ran for over twenty years. Even at the time of this film Warner was really too old to play a serving police officer- he would have been 67 in 1962- but he continued to play Dixon on television until 1976, when he was over 80. He also played police officers in several other feature films.
"Dixon of Dock Green" has acquired the reputation of giving a too cosy, sanitised picture of the British police service. Whether this picture is a fair one is difficult to judge, as the great majority of episodes are now lost. Most of the surviving ones come from the programme's later years in the mid-seventies and are said to be unrepresentative, as by then the scriptwriters were trying to give it a grittier tone to compete with other successful police dramas such as "Z-Cars" and "Softly, Softly". There is nothing particularly cosy, however, about "Jigsaw". For all its seaside glamour, Brighton in the mid-twentieth century had acquired a reputation for organised crime and gangsterism, a reputation made worse by a notorious police corruption scandal in the late fifties. Although the policemen in this film are not depicted as dishonest, an atmosphere of seedy corruption overhangs the town. Much of the action was filmed either in Brighton itself or in Saltdean or the neighbouring town of Lewes. (Saltdean is a real place, although the murder scene, 1 Bungalow Road, is fictitious).
The sixties, the period between the great films noirs of the fifties and the new wave of "tough cop" and gangster movies in the seventies, were not the greatest era in the history of the American crime film, and the same is true of Britain, where police dramas tended to move from the cinema to the TV screen. (Gangster films had never been popular on this side of the Atlantic). "Jigsaw", however, is one of the better ones. The plot is complex, but never too much so, and Val Guest, who was both scriptwriter director, manages to create a good deal of tension as the police hunt for the killer, knowing that he has a history of casual relationships with women and that he is quite capable of killing again. The denouement is rather contrived, but that apart the film has held up well in the sixty years since it was made. 7/10
A goof. A key plot point is whether a particular shop was open on a particular day, Monday 23rd April. This day turns out to have been Easter Monday (allowing us to date the action precisely to 1962) and the police therefore conclude (without asking the shopkeeper) that it must have been closed. In fact, there is no legal obligation for shops to close on Easter Monday or other Bank Holidays, and many shops in a resort town like Brighton would have remained open to take advantage of the large number of holidaymakers flocking to the town.
The film opens with the killing of a woman by a man. We know the motive for the crime; she was his mistress, and wanted to him to leave his wife for her because she was pregnant. We do not, however, learn either party's true identity and do not see the man's face. We are initially led to believe that his name is "John Campbell", but it soon becomes clear that this is a pseudonym.
The Brighton CID are called in to investigate a break-in at an estate agent's office in the town centre. At first sight this appears to have been a minor crime, with nothing of any value taken, but their investigations take them to a house in the village of Saltdean, a few miles outside the town, where they stumble upon the body of the woman killed in the opening scene. The rest of the film is a police procedural, showing how the detectives put together the pieces of a metaphorical "jigsaw" to establish the identity of the dead woman and the identity and whereabouts of her killer and to collect the evidence which will prove his guilt. As might be expected, there are a couple of false leads.
The police officer leading the investigation, Detective Inspector Fred Fellows, is played by Jack Warner, regarded at the time as Britain's favourite policeman. Warner had created the character of PC George Dixon in "The Blue Lamp" in 1950. Dixon was killed by a young thug in that film, but the character proved so popular that he was revived and given his own television series, "Dixon of Dock Green", which ran for over twenty years. Even at the time of this film Warner was really too old to play a serving police officer- he would have been 67 in 1962- but he continued to play Dixon on television until 1976, when he was over 80. He also played police officers in several other feature films.
"Dixon of Dock Green" has acquired the reputation of giving a too cosy, sanitised picture of the British police service. Whether this picture is a fair one is difficult to judge, as the great majority of episodes are now lost. Most of the surviving ones come from the programme's later years in the mid-seventies and are said to be unrepresentative, as by then the scriptwriters were trying to give it a grittier tone to compete with other successful police dramas such as "Z-Cars" and "Softly, Softly". There is nothing particularly cosy, however, about "Jigsaw". For all its seaside glamour, Brighton in the mid-twentieth century had acquired a reputation for organised crime and gangsterism, a reputation made worse by a notorious police corruption scandal in the late fifties. Although the policemen in this film are not depicted as dishonest, an atmosphere of seedy corruption overhangs the town. Much of the action was filmed either in Brighton itself or in Saltdean or the neighbouring town of Lewes. (Saltdean is a real place, although the murder scene, 1 Bungalow Road, is fictitious).
The sixties, the period between the great films noirs of the fifties and the new wave of "tough cop" and gangster movies in the seventies, were not the greatest era in the history of the American crime film, and the same is true of Britain, where police dramas tended to move from the cinema to the TV screen. (Gangster films had never been popular on this side of the Atlantic). "Jigsaw", however, is one of the better ones. The plot is complex, but never too much so, and Val Guest, who was both scriptwriter director, manages to create a good deal of tension as the police hunt for the killer, knowing that he has a history of casual relationships with women and that he is quite capable of killing again. The denouement is rather contrived, but that apart the film has held up well in the sixty years since it was made. 7/10
A goof. A key plot point is whether a particular shop was open on a particular day, Monday 23rd April. This day turns out to have been Easter Monday (allowing us to date the action precisely to 1962) and the police therefore conclude (without asking the shopkeeper) that it must have been closed. In fact, there is no legal obligation for shops to close on Easter Monday or other Bank Holidays, and many shops in a resort town like Brighton would have remained open to take advantage of the large number of holidaymakers flocking to the town.