“No
Sherlockian library is complete without at least one book on the films of Sherlock
Holmes,” Steven Doyle writes in Sherlock
Holmes for Dummies.
Well,
I had at least one. Now I have three more. I bought them from Don Curtis at a
mini-auction during the most recent meeting of the Illustrious Clients of Indianapolis.
I
decided to work my way through the trio starting with Sherlock Holmes on the Screen, by Alan Barnes. It’s “a real
cracker,” as my British friend Roger Johnson might say.
The
book covers both movies and TV shows – English-speaking and otherwise. It presents
them in alphabetical order rather than chronological, with a chronology at the end.
This approach has a lot of merit, but Barnes’s pedantic approach to titles does
not. The first Basil Rathbone – Nigel Bruce movie shows up under the “S’s” because
it’s official full title is Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles.
Therefore, all the many Hounds covered
in the book aren’t considered together. Too bad, that.
In
most cases, Barnes considers the plots in three sections: “The Mystery,” “The
Investigation,” and “The Solution.” That’s a neat idea in theory, but rather arbitrary
in practice.
The
great strength of this book is the author’s strong opinions, which are sometimes
laugh-out-loud funny. Here he is on Patrick Macnee as Holmes in 1993’s The Hound of London:
“Macnee
was merely bad as Roger Moore’s Watson in Sherlock
Holmes in New York, and only terrible as Christopher Lee’s sidekick in Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady and
Incident at Victoria Falls – but he
makes a truly dreadful Holmes, wheezing out every line while resembling nothing
less than an unshelled tortoise poured into a monkey suit.”
Wow!
Many
of his comments are more balanced, as when he differentiates the best episodes of
the 1950’s Ronald Howard TV series from the worst.
Surprisingly,
Barnes finds “a certain gauche charm” in Sherlock
Holmes in New York. He also defends Nigel Bruce as the perfect Watson for
Rathbone. Their Hound, he says, “would
be blissful even without such a fine detective/doctor team. The fact of that
team’s presence makes it quite probably the only Sherlock Holmes film that can
hold its head among the true classics of the cinema.”
That
sounds about right to me.
The Fort Myers/Cape Coral group ("The Dumber Brothers") will be discussing BOSC (Boscombe Valley) at our next meeting. I usually send out some info to our members in advance. You got any learned-insightful-witty-and-mercifully-brief writings thereunto appertaining ? Thanks (Larry Gillis, Tantalus)
ReplyDeleteHmm. I don't know whether this is advance-worthy or not but here's what strikes me about the story:
ReplyDelete1. It is one of the original half-dozen Strand stories, just as Holmes was catching fire.
2. Mrs. Watson, the understanding spouse, actually encourages the good doctor to answer Holmes's summons to adventure.
3. The tale includes a number of familiar elements, including a pair of star-crossed lovers and a motie that stretches back long ago to a backstory in one of the colonies.
How's what?