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THE FIRST DEADLY SIN
Rating: 
USA. 1980.
Director – Brian G. Hutton, Screenplay – Mann Rubin, Based on the Novel by Lawrence Sanders, Producers – George Pappas & Mark Shanker, Photography – Jack Priestley, Music – Gordon Jenkins, Production Design – Woody Mackintosh. Production Company – Artanis/Cinema Seven.
Cast:
Frank Sinatra (Detective-Sergeant Edward Delaney), Faye Dunaway (Barbara Delaney), Martin Gabel (Christopher Langley), David Dukes (Daniel Blank), James Whitmore (Dr Sanford Ferguson), Brenda Vaccaro (Monica Gilbert), Joe Spinell (Charles Lipsky), George Coe (Dr Bernardi), Anthony Zerbe (Captain Broughton)
Plot: NYPD detective Edward Delaney’s wife has just taken ill in hospital and he is only several weeks from retirement. He tries to convince his superiors of the existence of a serial killer but is told to sit back and take it easy until his retirement. He ignores this and decides to pursue the case singlehandedly.
This is a surprisingly lifeless police procedural. It wasn’t really until after The Silence of the Lambs (1991) that filmmakers learned how to co-opt the strictures of forensic psychology and make this type of film compulsive. Back at this time (the 1970s) these type of stories were told principally as detective stories, not as psycho-thrillers.
The whole exercise is dreary. Stars Frank Sinatra and Faye Dunaway are made to look aged and rundown, the film is about their encroaching old age, but their lives make the film an exercise in tedium – and it was no great surprise, except it seems to the film-makers themselves, that audiences didn’t flock to the film. Even though it was adapted from a best-selling book, the thriller aspect is incredibly lackluster – after a mildly promising build-up the psycho of the piece is cursorily shot by the detective at the climax. One of the few bright moments in the film come from Martin Gabel as the armourer who joins Sinatra – there is an amusing scene in a hardware store with him nonchalantly asking a clerk about the best hammer for killing a person.
The First Deadly Sin was originally to have been directed by Roman Polanski. Polanski would have been guaranteed to have made a more interesting film out of it than Hutton has. Of course Polanski had to abandon the film after fleeing the US when he was charged with having sex with a minor.
Copyright Richard Scheib 1999-2012
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