Who?

Cast: Elliott Gould, Trevor Howard, and Joseph Bova

Director: Jack Gold   

93 minutes (PG) 1974

Powerhouse (Indicator)

Blu-ray region B

Rating: 9/10

Review by Steven Hampton  

Questions and theories about personal identity form a major subgenre theme of science fiction, especially in the mind-expanding New Wave that sprang to prominence from the influential writing of novelist Philip K. Dick, who mapped the field’s peculiar authenticity with special regard to humanity in several original books. Cult movies like French horror Eyes Without A Face (aka: Les Yeux sans visage, 1960), and John Frankenheimer’s curio drama Seconds (1966), helped to create an intriguing and ongoing cycle of genre cinema that’s as varied in its scope and character traits as Warren Beatty’s reincarnation fantasy Heaven Can Wait (1978), Ridley Scott’s seminal Blade Runner (1982), Paul Verhoeven’s splattery satire RoboCop (1987), John Woo’s Face/Off (1997), Pedro Almodovar’s body-horror The Skin I Live In (2011), and Tarsem Singh’s actioner Self/Less (2015). There’s also a number of TV series, from Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner (1967), and Donald P. Bellisario’s Quantum Leap (1989-93), to Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse (2009-10), adding yet more diversity and multiplicity of roles to screen stories that interrogate unique identity.

An identity crisis often explores complex philosophical puzzles about the nature of human consciousness, any practical criteria for sentience, and individuals seemingly cast adrift in space-time, that confront the difference between facts and truth, so that vital distinctions - whether depending upon official papers or gleaned from genetic codes - become a fluid reality. Doppelgangers, avatars, and clones or twins, along with mind or body-swaps and telepathy, bring dramatic puzzles and supplementary confusions to SF about the political order and social necessity of identifiable personae. 

“It feels wonderful to be back.”

Written by John Gould, adapting the book by Algis Budrys, spy-fi drama Who? (aka: The Man In The Steel Mask, 1974), delivers a quite fascinating mystery and so it’s recognised today as something of an overlooked classic. Who? is the Kafkaesque flip-side to Lamont Johnson’s thriller, The Groundstar Conspiracy (1972), about an amnesiac man suspected of sabotage. Clearly, the original novel, Who? (1958), and Jack Gold’s fascinating movie offer a stylised sci-fi variation of 17th century French mystery The Man In The Iron Mask (often filmed, but to variable effect). Who? concerns a man so horribly disfigured, after a burning car crash, that his lost face is now a blankly robotic mask, his prosthetic head is a sculpted alloy dome, while his new cyborg body encases a nuclear-powered pacemaker in his chest. Is he really a dead man returned to ‘life’, or merely the robotic simulation of an individual, apparently created for the nefarious deception of espionage?

The metal-man is greeted by FBI agents at a German border checkpoint. Are they able to welcome home scientist Dr Lucas Martino (Joseph Bova), the same American genius from a top secret Neptune Project? Suspicious federal investigator Sean Rogers (Elliott Gould) acts with increasing paranoia after learning that a Soviet bloc spymaster, Colonel Azarin (Trevor Howard), was the overseer of a Russian medical salvage effort that has resulted in a Frankenstein-like enigma. Is this new Martino a ‘red spy’ who came in from the Cold War? Cleverly, and rather wittily, the movie’s various flashback scenes comprise notable examples of a first-person cinematic view-point and so, with this camera-work, we never actually see the original scientist Martino’s face on-screen. Can such a mystery be solved or, at least, reach a fully satisfying conclusion? Would any uncertain ending be a cop-out or a tragic disappointment? 

Who? is a genuinely uncanny tale of subtle ambiguity where doubts remain, because, for disbelieving minds, trust is like a very fragile eggshell. In the old nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty, the shattered visage of a broken icon might never be put back together, despite the efforts of “all the king’s men”. Perhaps, without any objective code of recognition, he can only be an imposter. The movie probes the essential mystery of whether any person is, or can be, identified as more than just the sum total of their own memories or human experiences. Even after many interrogations and examinations, the FBI agent is worried that this metal-man’s identity cannot be scientifically proven, nor positively determined. The importance of Who? within the cross-genre field of SF and spy dramas is marked by the challenging aspects of its complexity and originality. Although queries about identity have been dramatised many times since, especially in movies inspired by this one, Who? is a solidly constructed intriguer, and it remains one of the most impressive mysteries of its type.