Studies in Sherlock #5

It is right and proper that Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman be praised to the skies for their performances as Sherlock and John. Equally good, in my opinion, is Rupert Graves as Inspector Lestrade.

Graves plays the part as beleagured but intelligent. He might not be as clever as Sherlock, and he might be the victim of a barbed comment now and then, but he’s more than capable of holding his own against him. He’s also the first Lestrade I can think of who’s a bit, well, dishy.

This certainly wasn’t the case in Conan Doyle’s original stories. Lestrade is introduced to us as a “little sallow rat-faced, dark-eyed fellow”. His relationship with Holmes slowly moves from hostility to grudging respect, so that in The Adventure of the Six Napoleons he admits, “We’re not jealous of you down at Scotland Yard. No sir, we are proud of you, and if you come down to-morrow there’s not a man, from the oldest inspector to the youngest constable, who wouldn’t be glad to shake you by the hand.” In a rare display of emotion, Holmes is visibly moved.

Dennis Hoey was the first memorable screen Lestrade, in Universal’s film series with Basil Rathbone.

"And it's no good saying it ain't!"

Hoey played the Inspector as a bungler, resentful of Holmes’ cleverness and frequently baffled by his deductions. He’s usually to be found standing over a body, scratching his head and exclaiming, “Eh?” The series developed a nice little rivalry between Watson and Lestrade, the one-upmanship between Hoey and Nigel Bruce becoming a regular feature in the films.

However, we’re often invited to feel fondness for Hoey’s Lestrade. In The Spider Woman (1944), Watson and Lestrade believe Holmes to have perished. Tentatively, Watson offers Lestrade a souvenir from the Baker Street rooms. Choking up, Lestrade takes one of the detective’s pipes. Of course then Holmes arrives and an embarrassed Lestrade tries to replace the pipe without anyone noticing. It’s a lovely sequence, funny but also very touching.

One of the closest interpretations to Conan Doyle’s original description was that of Frank Finlay, who played Lestrade in both Holmes vs. the Ripper movies: A Study in Terror (1965) and Murder by Decree (1979).

Finlay as Lestrade to John Neville's Holmes in A Study in Terror

Finlay was a dogged little terrier, suspicious of Holmes but knowing the limits of his own intelligence. In both films, he does a great job of showing us how the horror of the Ripper crimes is beyond Lestrade’s comprehension. He gets many nice character moments in Murder by Decree, and I especially liked his amusement at the sight of James Mason’s Watson in a police cell.

More recently, Granada’s television series with Jeremy Brett had a wonderful Lestrade in Colin Jeavons.

A typically astounded Jeavons, with David Burke (ditto) as Watson

Jeavons always reminds me of the description of Lestrade in The Adventure of the Boscombe Valley Mystery, “a lean, ferret-like man, furtive and sly-looking”. He was frequently irritated by the flamboyant Brett, and constantly trying to get one over on him. But there was great warmth in Jeavons’ portrayal too. His delivery of the aforementioned speech from The Six Napoleons is a highlight of that episode.

Rupert Graves’ Lestrade plays an important role in both Moffat’s The Pilot and A Study in Pink. While Lestrade deplores the detective’s sociopathic tendencies, his faith in his abilities legitimizes Sherlock in our eyes. As I have mentioned before, I think that giving Lestrade the final line in The Pilot was a nice touch, showing us that “Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson” were now a unit, and establishing Lestrade’s ancillary position. In A Study in Pink, the line was taken away from Graves and given to Gatiss’ Mycroft (and you can read about my objections to that decision here).

I felt his absence in The Blind Banker. And while I can see the logic of showing us other policemen, really I just want more Lestrade. Never mind Gregson, Hopkins and Jones. Give us more Graves.

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.

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!