Dressed to Kill (1946)

Read my previous Rathbone reviews here and here!

The last Universal Sherlock Holmes film is something of a mixed bag. As usual there’s plenty to enjoy but, thirteen films on, there are real signs of strain and repetition here. Basil Rathbone, worried about typecasting, had elected not to renew his contract before shooting began. There’s a flatness to the film that may have resulted from a general winding down and, unfortunately, this isn’t quite the last hurrah that the series deserved.

• Dressed to Kill might seem like a strange title for a Holmes movie. While Basil and Nigel are impeccably turned out as usual, it’s the female villain Hilda Courtney (Patricia Morison) that’s the subject here! The working title had been Prelude to Murder, somewhat more atmospheric and appropriate given that the plot concerns a musical cipher.
• A lot of plot elements are reproduced from previous films. There’s the multi-part cipher from Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon, the tracking down of antiques from The Pearl of Death, and the formidable female villain from The Spider Woman and The Woman in Green. As in The Pearl of Death, there’s a hint of perversity in the obsession of henchman Hamid (Harry Cording) with Hilda Courtney.

Patricia Morison steps out with her co-stars

• Being an old schoolfriend of Dr. Watson is, once again, shown to be a perilous occupation. Here, poor old Julian ‘Stinky’ Emery (Edmund Breon) soon gets a knife in the back.
• We begin as Watson proudly looks over his latest publication in The Strand magazine – A Scandal in Bohemia. He mentions that the case occurred two years ago (in 1944?) and goes on to talk about Irene Adler, the woman who bested Holmes. Clearly, we are supposed to see Hilda Courtney as a new Irene Adler.
• Later in the film, Hilda will fool Watson by using a smoke bomb, as in A Scandal in Bohemia. She goes on to prove her mettle by trapping Holmes, cleverly baiting him through his knowledge of tobacco ash. In a very thrilling sequence, Holmes is handcuffed and hung from a girder as poisonous Nazi gas pumps out of a car engine. Not just poisonous gas, folks. Poisonous NAZI gas. Needless to say, Holmes escapes!
• Watson attempts to cheer up a frightened child by quacking like a duck. Unfortunately, this brings her to the verge of tears.
• The film ends at Samuel Johnson’s house with a nice example of Rathbone being a badass. Having shot Hamid, he deadpans, “I believe this fellow on the floor could use some medical attention. We must see that he looks his best, you know, when he’s hanged.” The emphasis that Rathbone places on that final word is just beautiful.
• Holmes gives Watson all the credit for solving the case; Watson chuckles, puffs out his chest and says, “I don’t think I could have done it entirely without Mr. Holmes’ help!” It’s a charming note on which to end the film, and the series.

Terror by Night (1946)

After enjoying Pursuit to Algiers so much last week (read my review here), Dolly Clackett and I picked out another film from the Rathbone and Bruce box set last night. Like its predecessor, Terror by Night takes place over the course of a journey, this time on an express train to Edinburgh.

• As you can see from the rather magnificent poster above, the case concerns a precious stone, the Star of Rhodesia, that Holmes must guard. Once his client is murdered and the jewel stolen, Holmes must discover which of the train’s passengers is guilty.
• Drawing on Conan Doyle’s The Blue Carbuncle, the film begins with a voiceover explaining that the jewel has brought death to all who have owned it. Later, Holmes finds that the murderer has been hiding in a coffin with a secret compartment, a twist on The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax.
• As in Pursuit to Algiers, there are no Baker Street scenes in this film. This means we miss out again on one of the series’ treasures, Mary Gordon as Mrs. Hudson. This time round, though, we do have the pleasure of Dennis Hoey’s wonderfully slow-witted Inspector Lestrade.
• A lot of attention is paid to the glamourous character Vivian Vedder. She’s one of the film’s most persistent red herrings – as shown by the undue prominence given her on the film poster. Vivian is supposed to be a Cockney but actress Renee Godfrey (born in New York) can’t manage the accent. A merciless mangling ensues.
• There’s some fun stuff with Nigel Bruce attempting to solve the case on his own and suspecting all of the wrong people.
• One of the reasons that I love thrillers set on trains is for the always exciting situation of characters falling out of trains or climbing along roofs. See Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes (1938) and Anthony Mann’s The Tall Target (1951) for a couple of fine examples. A particular highlight of Terror by Night is its version of the hero-fighting-not-to-get-kicked-off-the-train trope. An unidentified assailant furiously lashes out at Holmes, hanging on for dear life with only one hand. Rathbone looks wonderfully strained in this scene as his head falls back, dangerously close to the tracks. A triumph of back projection.
• It’s a shame that the distinctive Skelton Knaggs doesn’t have more screen time. He’s very sinister!
• This is the only Rathbone film to feature Colonel Sebastian Moran, henchman of the late Professor Moriarty, his infamous airgun updated to a streamlined “airpistol”. His identity is concealed for most of the film, so I don’t want to give too much away!
  

  Holmes with Inspector Macdonald (Boyd Davis)

• Unlike Holmesian scholars David Stuart Davies and Alan Barnes, I think Pursuit to Algiers has just got the edge on Terror by Night. Still, this film is another enjoyable entry and far better than I remembered. No doubt the restored prints have a great deal to do with my increased enjoyment!

• One of my favourite aspects of the Universal Sherlock Holmes films is the rousing speech that Rathbone delivers at the film’s conclusion. Sadly, neither Pursuit to Algiers nor Terror by Night end in this way. Perhaps the studio felt it was unnecessary with the war over. It’s a shame; those moments between the two friends ended the films satisfyingly, and were always beautifully delivered by Rathbone. Perhaps, then, my next selection from the box set will be a wartime Holmes!

Sherlock: A Study in Pink

This review contains spoilers.

A Study in Scarlet is one of the least adapted stories in the Sherlock Holmes canon. Like most of Conan Doyle’s novel-length adventures, its bipartite structure resists dramatization. The first half of the story depicts Holmes’ investigation; the second half, the murderer’s confession, the tale of a past wrong avenged. Consequently, there are very few screen portrayals of Holmes and Watson meeting for the first time.

A Study in Scarlet, 1887

So I was surprised that Steven Moffat’s script for last night’s Sherlock followed its Doylean source material so closely. We got John’s meeting with Stamford, Sherlock’s beating of corpses, his deductions around Afghanistan, John’s gradual comprehension of his room-mate’s profession, the murder in Lauriston Gardens, the fruitless chase after a cab, the identification of the cabbie as the murderer, and his terrifying choice of poison pills. Also, I failed to notice a particularly skilful pun on the word ‘ring’, noted by Tom Sutcliffe in today’s Independent here.

For the obsessive aficionado (that’s me), there were a wealth of Holmesian in-jokes, often playing with Conan Doyle’s notorious inconsistency. So we found out that Mrs. Turner lived down the road from Mrs. Hudson, that Sherlock knew a waiter called Billy, and that John’s wandering war wound was a symptom of his PTSD. There were more straightforward quotations as well, like naming one victim James Phillimore and using the wonderful telegram from The Creeping Man : “Come at once if convenient – if inconvenient come all the same S.H.” Sadly, these quotations were sometimes diluted by the updating. Slice it where you like, “The game is on” just isn’t as dramatic as “The game is afoot”!

Like the Universal Rathbone-Bruce films which inspired this series, A Study in Pink boldly stole and reframed detail from the original adventures. However, it also demonstrated its awareness of previous adaptations. In interview, Moffat and Gatiss have mentioned their love for The Spider Woman (1944) and The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970). From the former comes the idea of serial suicides, from the latter Mycroft’s recasting as a sinister representative of the government.

The Spider Woman, Roy William Neill, 1944

I was especially impressed by the two central performances, and am excited to see how they will develop over the coming weeks. Freeman was intelligent and empathetic as John Watson. By structuring his entry into Sherlock’s world as a move from ennui to action (wonderfully realized in the transference from crutch to service revolver), the script gave us a compelling reason for his becoming part of this partnership.

Cumberbatch is potentially one of the great Sherlocks. Physically perfect for the role, the planes of his face convey the detective’s strangeness and inscrutability. Importantly, though, Cumberbatch isn’t a cold fish. We frequently see Sherlock excited and amused, allowing us to understand his passion for the grotesque. Also, I covet his coat enormously.

Unsurprisingly, Moffat chose to leave the second part of A Study in Scarlet alone. However, this left the motivation of the murderer weak. While Conan Doyle’s cabbie was full of pathos, Moffat’s is an arrogant psychopath bordering on cliche. It was difficult to believe the connection to Moriarty, which came off seeming like a tenuous attempt at arc-building.

While I liked the use of Mycroft, I had a major problem with the casting of Mark Gatiss. Maybe it’s just that I can’t separate him from The League of Gentlemen in my head, but I felt that his performance was horribly arch. It was as though he was playing ‘sinister’ in a comedy skit. And giving Gatiss the final line of the episode smacked of self-indulgence, which certainly wouldn’t have been the case if they’d just used another actor.

Some of the hyperactive editing and emphatic ‘whooshing’ on the soundtrack during action sequences (I’m thinking of the chase after the cab) was annoying, and I think this might have been better as a 60-minute episode. Nevertheless, I don’t want to end on a negative note. The next two episodes take The Dancing Men and The Bruce-Partington Plans as their starting points, both of which are much better stories than A Study in Scarlet. I’m looking forward to seeing how the series progresses!

I’ve chosen to avoid talking about the updating of the character in this review as I’ll be writing a guest blog on the subject for the indispensable Sherlocking later this week. Please do let me know what you thought about A Study in Pink by leaving a comment below!

Cumberbatch and Freeman interview

More goodies from Den of Geek! First, an entertaining interview with the new Sherlock and John (it’s difficult for me not to type ‘Holmes and Watson!’). Both men discuss their roles intelligently, and there’s a fine sense of camaraderie between them. It is especially nice to read of Cumberbatch’s attachment to Conan Doyle, and his reverence for Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett. The interview can be found here.

And then there’s this informative report, which contains the best description I’ve read so far of the new 221B set. I particularly liked the mention of the microwave, which ‘houses a beaker full of eyes’! There’s also some slight criticism of Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes from Moffat… You can read it here.

A Study in Sherlock

Thanks to Sherlocking, I got my first decent look at the new Moffat and Gatiss Sherlock yesterday. After thinking about the look of the show last week, it’s very exciting to finally get a sense of its tone. Here’s the video in question, which looks as though it was made to sell Sherlock abroad:

The footage begins with two short sequences introducing us to Holmes and Watson.

Holmes is beating a corpse in a morgue to determine bruising post-mortem. It’s a grisly moment, but lifted faithfully from Conan Doyle’s introduction to the character in A Study in Scarlet. Where we depart from Doyle is in the assertion of Sherlock’s attractiveness. Rather like Moffat’s Eleventh Doctor, Sherlock feigns obliviousness to this kind of attention.

Watson, returned from service in Afghanistan, is having trouble adjusting to life in London. Meeting an old acquaintance for lunch leads him to take rooms with Sherlock, who warns Watson of his predilection for playing the violin and keeping moody silences. Again, I could be describing the first chapter of A Study in Scarlet.

A nice scene of the two over dinner swiftly raises and dismisses the question of Holmes’ sexual preference, while we discover that the police distrust his close relationship with crime.

In the following ‘behind-the-scenes’, Gatiss talks about their desire to move away from ‘Victorian pastiche’ and to bring back a focus on the characters. We often forget that the Holmes stories were written over a period of some fifty years, and that their magazine publication and changing illustrators kept the character seeming contemporary. Very few illustrators of the 1920s stories kept Holmes in a fetishized Victorian environment.

Holmes on the blower, from 'The Three Garridebs' (1924)

I mentioned, in my post last week, that I was interested in how the series would deal with technology. How useful is a man with a brain like a computer in the age of the internet?

Wisely, the programme makers have fully engaged with this. What lifts this Sherlock above everyone else’s iPhone is his ability to make ‘leaps of logic’. Modernization has another effect: while this is London in the present day, and a recognizable Baker Street, it is also one that has (unsurprisingly) any reference to Sherlockian tourism erased.

The series deals with this knowingly. Look at the positioning of camera for Watson emerging from Baker Street tube, so that the bronze Holmes statue is just out of shot. Likewise, the decision to put 221B above ‘Mrs. Hudson’s Snax and Sarnies’. Anyone who has made a pilgrimage to Baker Street, and been throroughly disappointed, will smile ruefully at that touch.

What has surprised me most is the way in which this first episode, allegedly entitled A Touch of Pink, draws upon that first Holmes adventure A Study in Scarlet. And not just in terms of the title – those of you who know the novel may have noticed clues which suggest crime and murderer are also very similar.

Well, over to you. Is this, as Moffat claims, ‘Sherlock Holmes restored’?