Tag: Sherlock Holmes

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)

Peter Cushing is the great detective in The Hound of the Baskervilles

Director: Terence Fisher

Cast: Peter Cushing (Sherlock Holmes), André Morell (Doctor Watson), Christopher Lee (Sir Henry Baskerville), Marla Landi (Cecile Stapleton), David Oxley (Sir Hugo Baskerville), Francis de Wolff (Dr Mortimer), Miles Malleson (Bishop Frankland), Ewen Solon (Stapleton), John Le Mesurier (Barrymore), Helen Gross (Mrs Barrymore)

Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous story hardly needs introduction. In 1959 it was told with a Hammer Horror twist. With its demonic dog, fog covered moor and blood-laden backstory surely no Sherlock Holmes story could be better suited to the studio. The film is fairly faithful to the basic outline of the original, although with added tarantulas and (more controversially) a new villain.

But it all works pretty much a treat, largely due to the performances of Cushing and Morell as Holmes and Watson. Cushing’s Holmes is sharp, analytical, has bursts of energy mixed with impatient distraction. Cushing went back to the stories and threw in many small details – from lines from Doyle to physical moments such as securing notes to the mantelpiece with a knife. His Holmes also uses rudeness in a Doylesque way he rarely does in film. Cushing has the intelligence and dynamism of the Detective – he’s one of the more overlooked actors to play the role – and had been determined to be faithful in his interpretation (sadly sequels were not forthcoming, although Cushing played the role several more times on the BBC).

Morell also returned to the novels to present a Dr Watson who was smooth, professional, assured and competent if uninspired. It was a far cry from the blundering buffoon which – thanks to Nigel Bruce – the public expected from Holmes’ faithful Boswell. Morell’s more patrician style made him a fine contrast with Cushing’s bohemian tinged Holmes. The two actors also spark beautifully off each other and create a feeling of a genuine friendship, underpinned by affection and loyalty, frequently showing genuine concern for each other’s safety.

Aside from these two excellent performances in the leads, the film is a solid if not spectacular adaptation, competently filmed. Terence Fisher’s direction sometimes struggles to cover the cheapness of the enterprise and some sets convince more than others. For a film that is quite short, the pace sometimes slackens (the Baskerville legend in particular gets far too much screen time, probably connected to the presence of the buxom servant girl Sir Hugo is planning to bed). Moments such as an attempt to assassinate Sir Henry via tarantula in London (which makes no sense at all) provides decent moments of tension but are basically filler.

The film does manage to address some of the problems of the novel by introducing a greater sense of mystery, in particular by providing motivations for several characters. Saying that, just as in the novel (where the mystery is solved by Holmes travelling to Scotland and reading some records – not good drama), here much of the mystery is resolved by Holmes carrying out an off-stage conversation with convict Seldon. Much as in the book, Holmes travelling to the area incognito doesn’t really add much to the story other than providing a late reveal.

Better invention however comes in the introduce of a femme fatale in Marla Landi’s Cecile Stapleton, here re-imagined as a sexy, wild girl of undefined (and nonsensical) European origin. She sparks off a neat chemistry with Christopher Lee’s Sir Henry – here playing for the only time in his career not the villain but the romantic lead! – and her development late in the film presents a fresh take on the resolution.

It’s certainly a little more fresh than the eventual scuffle with the dog – which to be honest doesn’t look either that intimidating or convincing. The dog itself is rather underwhelming, and more threat is actually conveyed by the moor itself, a mysterious stretch of land coated in fog covering treacherous bogs.

What Fisher and Hammer do really well is atmosphere, and the gothic feel of the piece is pretty much spot on. There is the expected claret red blood – and a suggestion of something really grotesque which befalls a victim on the moor – mixed in with sexy ladies. It’s an exploitation twist on Holmes, but then the novel itself was basically pretty much a B-movie in text. And the fundamental story is largely unchanged, with both the virtues and vices of the book captured.

The finest thing about it is the acting. Several scene-stealing actors chuck in neat cameos. Le Mesurier is perfect as the reserved butler Barrymore. De Wolff is a sharp and arrogant Mortimer. Malleson steals his scenes as an absent-minded Frankland (here re-imagined as an eccentric cleric). Christopher Lee relishes the chance to play against type, making Sir Henry a pillar of upright, honest decency. But the real delight is Cushing and Morell as Holmes and Watson, a brilliant combination.

Mr Holmes (2015)

Ian McKellen is an ageing Sherlock trying to understand his past in Mr Holmes

Director: Bill Condon

Cast: Ian McKellen (Sherlock Holmes), Laura Linney (Mrs Munro), Milo Parker (Roger Munro), Hiroyuki Sanada (Taiki Umezaki), Hattie Morahan (Ann Kelmot), Patrick Kennedy (Thomas Kelmot), Roger Allam (Dr Barrie), Phil Davis (Inspector Gilbert), Frances de la Tour (Madame Schirmer)

It’s 1946 and over 35 years since Sherlock Holmes (Ian McKellen) last investigated a case. Living in retirement with his bees in Devon, with his housekeeper Mrs Munro (Laura Linney) and her inquisitive son Roger (Milo Parker), 93-year-old Holmes’ final “case” is to try and combat the deterioration of his own mental faculties. This focuses on his attempts to remember the details of his final case, investigating the wife (Hattie Morahan) of a client, a case where he knows something went terribly wrong, but cannot recall the exact details.

Condon’s film is a quiet, gentle piece which primarily becomes a character study of the Great Detective, trying to locate the man inside the thinking machine. This is a Holmes unlike any other, haunted by past mistakes and scared of losing the intellectual abilities that have been his principal purpose. Condon’s film also makes clear that much of what we know about Holmes was a cheeky “embellishment” by Watson in his stories – from the pipe and deerstalker to the address of 221B. This is a Holmes who failed all his life to form personal connections, and found this problem magnified by becoming a real-life fictional character, a person who knows no-one but is known by everyone.

This fascinating re-evaluation of Holmes is helped by Ian McKellen’s superb performance (in his second collaboration with Condon after Gods and Monsters). McKellen’s ability to convey the intellectual sharpness of Holmes is matched by his vulnerability and fragility as he feels those same powers begin to fail. This is a Holmes who can still sharply deduce where someone has been from a quick analysis, but needs to write Roger’s name on his cuff to help him remember whom he is talking to. McKellen’s performance slowly reveals the longing for emotional connection and his own regrets at the isolation that has dominated his own life.

The expressiveness of Ian McKellen’s eyes comes into play here, both their capacity for joy – and this is a Holmes who takes an intense pleasure in his own acuity – and the way McKellen is able to allow these eyes to glaze over with forgetfulness and flashes of senility. He also forms a wonderful bond with Milo Parker (very good, genuine and real) as Roger, the two of them forming an odd couple relationship that also gives Holmes a beginning of an understanding of what he has missed from a life without family and friends.

Alongside this fascinating character study, the actual storyline is fairly tame – but then that’s hardly the point. The modern day plotline takes in physical and mental decline, isolation, fracturing family bonds and post-war Japan (where Holmes travels in search of “Prickly ash” a plant he hopes will help to counteract his mental decline). But it’s really a quiet framework to change this Holmes into a man who sees the world only in terms of logic and puzzles, and must learn to see the humanity and emotions that underlie people’s actions. It’s a Holmes who must learn to appreciate feelings, to express them and to tell “white lies” to save people from pain.

It’s no surprise that the past sequences – where a spry McKellen also plays Holmes in his late 50s – also revolve around this. The investigation cheekily features spiritualism (the pseudo-science that obsessed Conan Doyle in his later days) but the real point is Holmes failing to understand the pain and loss that underlie the desire to believe in the possibility of life after death – that loss is a traumatic event that cannot be hand-waved away with a presentation of facts, but a has a real lasting impact on people. Hattie Morahan captures this wonderfully, in a quietly emotional performance as a grieving mother.

The final resolution of this I found slightly less satisfying – perhaps because I thought of actual “canon” stories that showed Holmes expressing far more emotional intelligence than this film gives him the credit for understanding here (e.g. The Yellow Face). I’m also not sure if this failure would really have left any Holmes punishing himself with 35 years of isolation with bees. But it fits with the film’s concept of a Holmes who finds himself pained by loneliness.

This loneliness is hammered home throughout. Mycroft, Hudson and Watson are long dead. Watson himself is implied to be a man who never understood Holmes, that the “fictionalised” Holmes became more real to him than the flesh-and-blood man. That on Watson’s part the friendship became about the stories, with Holmes always triumphant, rather than reflecting who he was. Holmes finds this disconnection between his inner self and the world’s perception hammered home at every turn – at one point the film shows him watching a Rathbone-esque film (where he is played by Nicholas Rowe, the actor from Young Sherlock Holmes), where the case that haunts him plays out with a traditional ease. Completing this disconnection, Watson remains unseen in the film: a stranger whom Holmes was tied to forever.

All this makes for a thought-provoking film, with a delightful performance from McKellen making a truly unique and original screen Holmes. There are a host of fabulous supporting performances – Laura Linney does fine work as his insecure, lonely housekeeper who feels she is losing her son to the detective – and the film is a gloriously entertaining Sunday afternoon treat, which will make you think again about a man whom the whole world knows, but who may not know himself.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011)

Our heroes are on the run in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Director: Guy Richie

Cast: Robert Downey Jnr (Sherlock Holmes), Jude Law (Dr John Watson), Jared Harris (Professor James Moriarty), Noomi Rapace (Madame Simza Heron), Stephen Fry (Mycroft Holmes), Kelly Reilly (Mary Morstan), Rachel McAdams (Irene Adler), Eddie Marsan (Inspector Lestrade), Paul Anderson (Sebastian Moran), Geraldine James (Mrs Hudson), Thierry Neuvic (Claude Ravache)

Sequels are tricky beasts. You need to work out what people liked about the first film and double down on it, while also expanding the story in new and exciting ways. When I first saw Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows in the cinema, I was very sceptical about whether this film managed that. But actually, viewing it a second time around (and almost seven years later), I enjoyed it a lot more than I remembered.

As Watson (Jude Law) prepares for his wedding to Mary Morstan (Kelly Reilly), Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jnr) is consumed into an investigation targeting the “Napoleon of Crime” Professor James Moriarty (Jared Harris). A series of bombings across Europe is being blamed on anarchists – but is it in fact a scheme launched by Moriarty’s military-industrial complex to instigate a world war (from which he can make a profit)? Well what do you think?

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows doubles down most strongly on the relationship between Holmes and Watson. Recognising that the things from the first film everyone loved was the brotherly banter between these two, the sequel places it front and centre. While the first film felt the need to introduce a traditional love interest for Holmes, this film kills off Irene Adler in the first few minutes (despite this, poor Rachel McAdams has better material here than most of the first film). Instead the true “romantic” relationship of the film is Holmes and Watson, as they banter, bicker and make huge sacrifices to protect each other.

It’s helped again by Downey Jnr and Law’s excellent performances and their strong chemistry. Saying this, the first half hour of the film thinks it’s funnier than it is, with its intermixing of Watson’s stag night with a series of Downey fights. There is a little too much brashness to it early on, without sufficient grounding in the warmth between the two characters. But once we hit the real action 40 minutes into the film, the balance between comedy, affection and peril is pretty effectively met.

And Ritchie directs some very fine action sequences here. There is an extraordinary sequence of a chase through the forest, which uses an exquisite mixture of hand held cameras, Steadicam, slow motion and half a dozen other tricks to deliver a series of striking and immersive shots. Yes it’s overblown and in-your-face but it works perfectly. The film is crammed with brash, powerful action scenes like this that really strike you between the eyes.

It also still keeps in touch with the original novels in a nice way. Some of the best dialogue scenes are those between Holmes and Jared Harris’ muscular but serpentine Moriarty (Harris is very good, a far stronger villain than the first film). These scenes use dialogue from the original stories extremely effectively. Meanwhile, its build towards its version of the Reichenbach fall is actually very clever, one that twists on the movie’s “calling card” of Holmes predicting every move of a fight before it begins by having Moriarty pull the same trick (which is in itself a neat scene).

Where the film does fall short amidst all this action and explosions and jokes (some good, some bad) is that we don’t get much in the way of investigation or deduction. There is a bit of sleight-of-hand and a touch of pocket picking, but most of the “deductions” are based on highlighting with the camera or dialogue objects that might as well be labelled “Important Plot Device”. Holmes doesn’t so much as investigate here as charge head first from one combat sequence or dangerous situation to another. There isn’t a lot of patience in his method here – and not a lot of patience in the film itself. But then this film is largely based on The Final Problem, probably one of the least “detective” of the stories in the cannon.

But Game of Shadows is very good fun, has some neat action sequences, is well shot and is more or less entertaining, even if some of the comedy suggests it’s a little too pleased with itself. Sure it loses some of the smaller-scale delights of both the books and original film in its rush to make sure you are wowed. But I enjoyed it a lot more the second time round, since I’d watched the original film more recently and was tuned up into what it was trying to do.

Sherlock Holmes (2009)

Robert Downey Jnr and Jude Law made a great odd couple in Sherlock Holmes

Director: Guy Richie

Cast: Robert Downey Jnr (Sherlock Holmes), Jude Law (Dr John Watson), Rachel McAdams (Irene Adler), Mark Strong (Lord Henry Blackwood), Kelly Reilly (Mary Morstan), Eddie Marsan (Inspector Lestrade), Hans Matherson (Lord Coward), James Fox (Sir Thomas Rotheram), Geraldine James (Mrs Hudson), William Houston (Constable Clark), William Hope (Ambassador Standish)

I don’t think there has been a single character brought to the screen more often than Sherlock Holmes. Sure there are certain tent-pole performances (Rathbone, Brett, Cumberbatch) that people automatically think of when you say “Sherlock Holmes”, but there are hundreds of others. It’s a character that survives constant re-imagination. In fact, you could argue it’s pretty much vital to bring something of your own to the table when putting together a Sherlock Holmes dramatisation. It’s what made Sherlock so successful. And it’s something that works very well here.

Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jnr) is part Bohemian artist, part mad scientist, part kickboxer. The sort of guy who can think so far ahead he can plan out an entire fight in his mind before it even begins. He’s partnered up with determined, smart, handy-with-a-sword Dr Watson (Jude Law). With Watson preparing to move out of 221B to marry Mary Morstan (Kelly Reilly), they take on their last case: defeating creepy Dracula-lite Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong), who claims to have returned from the dead and wants to take over the British Empire. Along the way they are helped (or hindered) by the mysterious Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams) an old flame of Holmes’.

Guy Ritchie’s rollicking adventure is actually a huge amount of fun that, underneath the crashes and bangs, actually has a really strong respect for the original stories (the film is littered with references and quotes from the originals, none of which feel shoe-horned in except maybe Rachel McAdams’ Irene Adler, perhaps because the producers felt Holmes needed a love interest to stop any worries that he might be a bit too much in love with Watson). Ritchie has crafted a Holmes-Watson relationship that repositions them as a sort of odd-couple surrogate brothers, a marriage of equals (and make no mistake, a marriage is basically what this Holmes and Watson have). It’s big and silly, but then so were the original stories (The Creeping Man anyone?).

Ritchie is a film-maker it’s easy to find faintly annoying, with his faux-geezer attitudes, his bizarre philosophical views and his love of the poor-taste gag. But on this film he’s basically a director-for-hire rather than putting his own story together and, you know what, putting this director into a studio strait-jacket is actually pretty good. It smacks some disciple on him, makes him drop his indulgent and poor-taste jokes and instead brings his strengths as a director – his sense of pace, his eye for a witty image, his rollicking sense of fun – to the fore. That’s probably why this is his most enjoyable and best film.

It’s a film that mainly works because Downey Jnr and Law make a terrific pairing as Holmes and Watson. They have great chemistry, they spark off each other extremely well as performers and they really give the sense of two life-long devoted friends. Both actors are very good here. The film hits these notes of male friendship extremely well – a mixture of mocking and abuse, mixed with devotion and loyalty. The film gets the balance of these things exactly right: from debates to fights, you really get a sense that these two are honorary brothers, almost a bickering old married couple.

In fact, the whole film revolves quietly around this relationship coming under threat (as Holmes sees it) of Watson leaving Holmes to get married – although, nicely, the film makes clear his fears of Mary are completely unfounded. Part of the dual engine of the film is Holmes continuing to tempt Watson into getting more and more involved with his cases, because he doesn’t want to lose his friend. It’s actually quite sweet. As are the protective feelings both have for the other: Watson knows Holmes puts himself at ridiculous risks, in turn Holmes shows a gentle worry for Watson’s gambling addiction (a popular Sherlockian society interpolation from references in the story).

All this warm, brotherly stuff from two excellent performers is built into a dramatic, thrillingly shot, series of action and detection scenes. The film’s big gimmick is Holmes’ ability to use his analytical abilities to accurately predict the outcome of fights (which the film communicates with slow motion and forensic narration by Downey Jnr, before staging the entire fight again at real time). It’s actually a fairly neat way of turning his deductive abilities into a visual language. Alongside this, plenty of this great fun – exciting or, as in Holmes’ battle with a 7ft giant, funny. All hugely entertaining.

Placing the focus on this relationship and the action does mean that the mystery elements of the plot get a bit short-changed. The story is a rather silly series of near-Dracula style high-Gothic mysteries that may or may not be real (all these occult references more than echo The Young Sherlock Holmes!). There isn’t much in the way of the small intricate puzzles of the early stories here – but then plenty of the later ones became increasingly hyper-real Gothic stories, so I guess that is fine. Mark Strong does a decent job as the villainous Blackwood, using his sinister looks and imperious voice extremely well.

It also looks wonderful – the photography and set design is marvellous – and the score by Hans Zimmer must be one of his best ever, a sprightly mix of Irish music, Westerns and Music Hall. Ritchie directs it with a wonderfully, tongue-in-cheek, entertaining sprightliness, like Sherlock Holmes meets Indiana Jones. Holmes more than survives his re-imagination as an action superhero – and in fact he brings across a lot of the tone and character of the original book along with him. A terrific entertainment and a more than worthy entry to the Holmes movie cannon.

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970)

Robert Stephens and Colin Blakely explore the mysteries of the Private Life of Sherlock Holmes

Director: Billy Wilder

Cast: Robert Stephens (Sherlock Holmes), Colin Blakely (Dr John Watson), Geneviève Page (Gabrielle Valladon), Christopher Lee (Mycroft Holmes), Irene Handl (Mrs Hudson), Clive Revill (Rogozhin), Tamara Toumanova (Madame Petrova), Stanley Holloway (Gravedigger), Mollie Maureen (Queen Victoria), Catherine Lacey (Old Woman)

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes may just be the best Sherlock Holmes film you’ll see. It’s certainly one of the most original. Wilder’s semi-pastiche, described by Mark Gatiss as “both reverent and irreverent”, was a major box-office disaster at the time, but it’s a film that has grown richer and more enjoyable with age – particularly as we’ve caught up with its “fan fiction” style, its placing of the great detective in unusual emotional and social situations.

Wilder’s film follows two “buried” cases of Sherlock Holmes, both suppressed by Watson. In the first (taking up the first quarter of the film), Sherlock Holmes (Robert Stephens) and Dr Watson (Colin Blakely) are invited to a production of Swan Lakeby the Russian Royal Ballet, where a curious and unusual case is proposed to Holmes. In the second story, a mysterious woman suffering from amnesia (Geneviève Page) winds up on the doorstep of 221B Baker Street. Investigating who and what has brought her there leads into a case that covers continents, the upper echelons of the British government, and (possibly) the deeply hidden depths of Holmes’ own heart.

First off, it’s impossible to talk about Private Life without noting we only really have half the film. Not only did audiences not get it, nor did the studio. Both were expecting a traditional Holmes adaptation. Getting an amusing and wry exploration of Holmes’ psychology, built into a film where the great detective makes several errors, was categorically not that. So half the film was cut and chucked in the bin (including two whole cases). The footage no longer survives (there is an excellent recreation of what is left on Eureka’s new blu-ray) – but it’s a film that might have been.

It’s also a film that was apparently hell to make. Wilder had always been demanding – he demanded a completely faithful interpretation of his text, and often gave scrupulous line readings. It went to extremes here: epic rehearsals before every shot, with every line and movement dictated. For Stephens – a fragile alcoholic going through a divorce – it was too much, and part way through filming he attempted suicide. Shooting was delayed while he recovered, though Stephens’ pale, wan face needed to be overly made-up to compensate (in the opening scenes he genuinely looks like a drag act).

So you can’t forget the turmoil that brought it to the screen. But the end result (what remains) is largely a delight, even if it isn’t perfect. But it really is decades ahead of its time. Just like Sherlock (and it’s certainly the parent of that show), its main interest is not the case but the detective, his foibles and his emotional hinterland. Motored throughout by the wonderful chemistry between Stephens and Blakely (the two actors were good friends), it’s a wonderfully written film, full of wry humour and banter, mixed with moments of genuine heart and emotion.

The film asks: who is Sherlock Holmes? Is he the cold fish he appears to be? While it doesn’t want to answer the enigma, it enjoys trying to unpeel those layers. Stephens’ Holmes is wry, witty, slightly fey, playful but also distant. He stands off from genuine intimacy and emotion – and why is that? As he spends time with Gabrielle Valadon, how much does he warm towards her – when he ruminates on his fears about trusting people, particularly women (in a marvellous late night conversation in an overnight train bunkbed), the film asks us to think: how damaged can this man who lives to investigate crimes but seems to have only one friend, be? It’s everything Sherlock took further: in fact the relationship between Holmes and Vardon has more than a few echoes in A Scandal in Belgravia.

The film’s real genius though is its opening short story, revolving around Holmes, a ballet company and a serious of unusual requests. This pastiche is very funny, very clever, beautifully played and crammed with invention and wit. The dialogue is beautiful, while both actors are perfect: Blakely is hilarious as a Watson full of joie de’vivre while Stephens’ drily amused Holmes works hard to never let surprise penetrate his raised eyebrow. The story goes down some mysterious alleyways – not least some curious questions around Holmes’ sexuality and experience with women. But it’s just about a perfect half hour of Holmesian pastiche: probably the best of its kind ever made.

The larger story doesn’t quite live up to it, but there are some beautiful moments in there, not least the growing bond between Holmes and Vardon in which nothing is ever said or done – and much is left open to interpretation – but where Holmes shows more of his humanity than he has perhaps ever done. The case itself is half humour, half expansion of Conan Doyle. By the end we are left asking ourselves how much on the back foot Holmes was for most of the case: and the case’s resolution eventually sniffs of satire. But the film itself ends on a bittersweet resolution, with Holmes facing the impact of emotions in a way he perhaps never has before.

Wilder’s film is sharp, witty and crammed with great scenes and jokes. It’s very well acted, particularly by Blakely as a hilarious Watson, full of good humour and bombast but with a sharp sense of cunning. He may not be as bright as Holmes, but he’s certainly bright enough to get the most out of life. Stephens is a little uncomfortable as Holmes (this film sparked a career nosedive that it took nearly 20 years for him to emerge from) but at certain moments he gives the part a really unique lightness masking an unknowable emotional hinterland.

It’s a film that’s easy to mistake for straight comedy, but it really isn’t. It’s a fascinating, entertaining and rewarding exploration of the leading character’s psyche, by writers who clearly know of what they speak. It throws in a case framework that smacks of the high-blown, Giant Rat of Sumatra-style cases Watson makes passing reference to in the stories. It’s a film that focuses on character and relationship – that captures a sense of friendship between Holmes and Watson that few other films have managed – and that spoofs the cannon while still feeling very true to it.

It’s not perfect: it’s overlong and sometimes the pace drags or the sparkle fades. But Wilder and Diamond’s script has plenty of jokes and cannon knowledge (this was the first pastiche to explore Holmes’ cocaine use – and the psychological reasons for it) and has some terrific performances. Christopher Lee makes a wonderful urbane, whipper-thin Mycroft while Irene Handl is a wonderfully bumptious Mrs Hudson. Not only did it inspire Sherlock – it must also keep inspiring all fans of the great detective.