WHO?

(vt The Man in the Steel Mask)

   Film (1974). Hemisphere/Maclean \& Co. Dir Jack Gold, starring Elliott Gould, Trevor Howard, Joseph Bova. Screenplay John Gould (Jack Gold), based on WHO? (1958) by Algis BUDRYS. 91 mins. Colour.

   Released long after being made, and publicized not at all, this taut, efficient little metaphysical thriller, hinging on questions of what constitutes identity, deserved rather better. A key US scientist (Bova) is terribly injured on the East German border and later returned, fixed up by the Russians, in CYBORG form with a metal face and hand. Or is he a planted double agent? Gould plays the US security man who sees to it that the cyborg is constantly watched. With a series of Cold-War riffs, a rather good subtext is set up about the human-seeming machine of the state apparatus (on both sides) versus the machine-seeming human (with more human feeling than he putatively had before, as shown in a touching scene with the ex-wife). The prosthetic "monster" finally rejects secret scientific work; instead he retires, quite alone, to a farm. The mask is never removed, not even metaphorically, and the mystery is only solved (for alert viewers) through ironic indirection. Gold is known mainly asone of the UK's better tv-drama directors.

   PN