Director: Sidney Lanfield
Cast: Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Richard Greene, Wendy Barrie
Have I Seen It Before: Sure.
Did I Like It: I keep thinking that certain types of stories, certain types of characters, are better suited to certain formats, with a few outlying exceptions. Batman works best in a comic book. Star Trek works best in hour-long television. Star Wars works best in rare, event movies.
Is it possible that Sherlock Holmes just works best in novels and short fiction?
Maybe.
Things are a little light here, and that’s to be expected from the studio system trying to jam a entire book into 80 minutes. Even a bad movie from 1939 has the charm of flickering in black and white and generally seeming as if it sprung whole-cloth from an untroubled* era.
Rathbone and Bruce seem tentative in their roles, but I wonder if I simply never thought much of the pair as Holmes and Watson, even if so many performers who followed are simply doing impressions of them.
The problem might be that one of the things filtered out of these Doyle adaptations is Holmes’ eccentricities. Subsequent pastiches and re-workings make Holmes to be brilliant, but erratic. Here, Holmes is merely a Smart Guy, and Watson—the only one with any actual training—is a bumbling fool.
Maybe they get better in the roles, but considering they had to grind out two Holmes pictures a year for the next seven years, I can’t imagine the assembly line mentality recommends the subsequent films any more than this first effort. The truth might be that those among you who might want to indulge in a does of classic Holmes should eschew Turner Classic Movies** in favor of the Doyle canon.
Or opt for some of the Nicholas Meyer books. There, now I’m back to my good old self.
*But, ultimately, entirely troubled.
**Gods of Cinema, what am I saying?!