The Sherlock Holmes thread

Started by vandermolen, November 03, 2017, 11:55:30 PM

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j winter

Quote from: vandermolen on December 02, 2019, 09:34:34 AM
I like 'The Resident Patient' very much. The Rathbone HOTB is excellent but it was a terrible mistake to set the other films during the era of World War Two. Such a shame. 'Charles Augustus Milverton' and 'The Valley of Fear' are other favourites.

Indeed, though the trend to contemporize Holmes certainly hasn't gone away.  I guess the intent is to make Holmes less of a "period piece."  The Rathbone movies were trying to be current, but today they look like cheap 40's noir -- I imagine that Elementary or Cumberbatch's Sherlock will look similarly dated in a few decades.

The irony is, while it's true that one of the biggest reasons that modern readers love the original stories is the powerful way in which they evoke the Victorian era, for the original audience they were contemporary crime stories, just as Rathbone's films were when released.  So while a modernized Holmes is in many ways problematic, in other ways it is actually closer to Conan Doyle's intent -- he didn't write them as historical stories, he had other books like The White Company, etc. for that.

Of course this is all an extension, in its way, of the eternal HIP debate... Jeremy Brett is superior to Cumberbatch because he performs in an authentic, period deerstalker...  :P



The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils.
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus.
Let no such man be trusted.

-- William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

vandermolen

#41
Quote from: j winter on December 02, 2019, 10:27:14 AM
Indeed, though the trend to contemporize Holmes certainly hasn't gone away.  I guess the intent is to make Holmes less of a "period piece."  The Rathbone movies were trying to be current, but today they look like cheap 40's noir -- I imagine that Elementary or Cumberbatch's Sherlock will look similarly dated in a few decades.

The irony is, while it's true that one of the biggest reasons that modern readers love the original stories is the powerful way in which they evoke the Victorian era, for the original audience they were contemporary crime stories, just as Rathbone's films were when released.  So while a modernized Holmes is in many ways problematic, in other ways it is actually closer to Conan Doyle's intent -- he didn't write them as historical stories, he had other books like The White Company, etc. for that.

Of course this is all an extension, in its way, of the eternal HIP debate... Jeremy Brett is superior to Cumberbatch because he performs in an authentic, period deerstalker...  :P

You make a good point I think. I always liked Douglas Wilmer in the role. By the way, if you get the chance, you might enjoy the recent BBC drama series 'Vienna Blood' (coming out on DVD I think) which is rather Holmesian.
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).