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Old Sherlock Holmes movies!
Jun. 13th, 2012 01:02 amFor Mother's Day Dad and I gave Mom this set of the Ronald Howard Sherlock Holmes TV series and four random Holmes movies, one Rathbone and three with some Arthur guy playing him. Since then, we've watched episodes off and on. Now that we're coming to the end of all of those (sadly; the original mysteries were so much fun), we started on the movies.
We tried the earliest one first, The Sign of Four from 1932. I ... wasn't that impressed with it. There was little to no chemistry between Holmes and Watson, and I just didn't get the vibe that they were close friends at all. It seemed to emphasize the negative and Watson acted like he wanted to show up Holmes. He also wasn't too bright at times, taking the girl right into danger. The writers tried to set up a romance between him and the girl, and while I'm aware he married a Mary in the books, I don't recall if she was the girl from this adventure (who was named Mary).
This past morning we watched Murder at the Baskervilles, which was not a retelling of The Hound of the Baskervilles, but a sequel! That was kind of a cool way to do it, honestly. I like seeing new adventures with old oneshot characters. It was based on a non-Holmes story of Doyle's called Silver Blaze. A different guy played Watson in it (Ian Fleming, actually), and the chemistry was there! It was lovely. That escapade felt much more like a legitimate Holmes venture and I was thrilled. I don't believe that you have to just adapt the canon stories for it to be good. As long as everyone is in character it should be just fine.
I didn't like that in order to get Lestrade into that film they had him get transferred to the Baskerville area. If it had just been on special assignment it would have been fine, but they sounded like it was permanent. And Holmes in London without Lestrade just isn't done. I did love their interaction in the film, though. They definitely came off as friends, and Lestrade wasn't made into a bumbling idiot.
(One thing I don't like about the Ronald Howard TV series is that they seem to take that approach with Lestrade sometimes. But they did seem to try to be kind to him at other times. I dunno; it annoys me in any series when they try to undermine the police by making them look stupid so they can elevate their star.)
One thing I like about both movies is that they very casually and unobtrusively slide things into the present day of their time (the 1930s). It really doesn't interfere at all; there's just an occasional car and the women's clothes and hairstyles, mainly. The atmosphere is the same. I say it takes great talent to adjust the time period and keep the right feeling. Of course, I first got interested in Holmes through some of the Rathbone movies, and most of those take place in the 1940s. I think for Holmes, time period isn't really important, as long as that nice, foggy, mysterious, London-ish feeling is there, and again, if everyone is in character.
One cliche of many movies, including that Baskerville sequel, is having Moriarty and Holmes clash repeatedly as arch-enemies. I have to say, I love that too. I think every arch-hero needs an arch-nemesis. I was kind of disappointed to find that they only clashed once in the books and Moriarty appeared/was mentioned in only two.
Also, I was sad when I read the books and saw that Watson really didn't live with Holmes for very long before he married and moved away. I've always had that iconic image in my mind of the two bachelors living in the flat, and me being someone who far prefers friendships to romantic endeavors, I just loved that.
Sometimes I feel like I'm committing sacrilege by usually preferring the movies and TV series to the books. I have the books all in one very nice, inexpensive collection and read them from time to time, but the truth is, I generally find them too lacking in action for my tastes. Some are very exciting; I absolutely loved the first part of The Valley of Fear. (But I wasn't that happy with the second half mainly just being a flashback, and I thought the present ending was depressing and disappointing.) Some I was disappointed by after all the hype surrounding them, such as The Hound of the Baskervilles. I didn't like that Holmes was in disguise for a lot of it and therefore, he and Watson didn't interact with Watson knowing it was him as much as they've interacted in some of the adaptions. And some I felt were much too short, such as The Final Problem. (And I never was fully satisfied with the manner in which Doyle revived Holmes in The Adventure of the Empty House.... I wish that one had been longer, too.) And yes, I realize most Holmes stories were short stories serialized in The Strand; don't anyone preach to me about that. I still say they were too short. ;)
Holmes seems to be somewhat of a jerk in some of the books, too. Most adaptions seem to tone that down a bit. I'm torn on what I think of that matter. On the one hand, you could argue that it's part of his character and shouldn't be gone. On the other hand, you could compare it to Gardner and his writing of Hamilton Burger, and how the TV series greatly improved on and remedied his cruel stereotype, and say that the Holmes adaptions are improving things by making him less of an arrogant jerk.
(And I pretty much refuse to accept that His Last Bow is how things ended, and that he and Watson didn't see each other for twenty years. That is too, too depressing. If Holmes wants to be a beekeeper, fine, but Watson should retire with him and they continue to stay together.)
I know most Holmes fans praise the books to high heaven, and certainly not without good and valid reasons. Doyle was a literary genius in many ways. And without the books, there wouldn't have been anything else. But I can't help it; I would usually rather watch a movie or a TV show episode than read the books.
Actually, that's the case for most things. I'm a very strange person who generally prefers the adaptions of anything to the original books. I've only ever found a handful of things where I hated the adaptions and/or loved the books best.
We tried the earliest one first, The Sign of Four from 1932. I ... wasn't that impressed with it. There was little to no chemistry between Holmes and Watson, and I just didn't get the vibe that they were close friends at all. It seemed to emphasize the negative and Watson acted like he wanted to show up Holmes. He also wasn't too bright at times, taking the girl right into danger. The writers tried to set up a romance between him and the girl, and while I'm aware he married a Mary in the books, I don't recall if she was the girl from this adventure (who was named Mary).
This past morning we watched Murder at the Baskervilles, which was not a retelling of The Hound of the Baskervilles, but a sequel! That was kind of a cool way to do it, honestly. I like seeing new adventures with old oneshot characters. It was based on a non-Holmes story of Doyle's called Silver Blaze. A different guy played Watson in it (Ian Fleming, actually), and the chemistry was there! It was lovely. That escapade felt much more like a legitimate Holmes venture and I was thrilled. I don't believe that you have to just adapt the canon stories for it to be good. As long as everyone is in character it should be just fine.
I didn't like that in order to get Lestrade into that film they had him get transferred to the Baskerville area. If it had just been on special assignment it would have been fine, but they sounded like it was permanent. And Holmes in London without Lestrade just isn't done. I did love their interaction in the film, though. They definitely came off as friends, and Lestrade wasn't made into a bumbling idiot.
(One thing I don't like about the Ronald Howard TV series is that they seem to take that approach with Lestrade sometimes. But they did seem to try to be kind to him at other times. I dunno; it annoys me in any series when they try to undermine the police by making them look stupid so they can elevate their star.)
One thing I like about both movies is that they very casually and unobtrusively slide things into the present day of their time (the 1930s). It really doesn't interfere at all; there's just an occasional car and the women's clothes and hairstyles, mainly. The atmosphere is the same. I say it takes great talent to adjust the time period and keep the right feeling. Of course, I first got interested in Holmes through some of the Rathbone movies, and most of those take place in the 1940s. I think for Holmes, time period isn't really important, as long as that nice, foggy, mysterious, London-ish feeling is there, and again, if everyone is in character.
One cliche of many movies, including that Baskerville sequel, is having Moriarty and Holmes clash repeatedly as arch-enemies. I have to say, I love that too. I think every arch-hero needs an arch-nemesis. I was kind of disappointed to find that they only clashed once in the books and Moriarty appeared/was mentioned in only two.
Also, I was sad when I read the books and saw that Watson really didn't live with Holmes for very long before he married and moved away. I've always had that iconic image in my mind of the two bachelors living in the flat, and me being someone who far prefers friendships to romantic endeavors, I just loved that.
Sometimes I feel like I'm committing sacrilege by usually preferring the movies and TV series to the books. I have the books all in one very nice, inexpensive collection and read them from time to time, but the truth is, I generally find them too lacking in action for my tastes. Some are very exciting; I absolutely loved the first part of The Valley of Fear. (But I wasn't that happy with the second half mainly just being a flashback, and I thought the present ending was depressing and disappointing.) Some I was disappointed by after all the hype surrounding them, such as The Hound of the Baskervilles. I didn't like that Holmes was in disguise for a lot of it and therefore, he and Watson didn't interact with Watson knowing it was him as much as they've interacted in some of the adaptions. And some I felt were much too short, such as The Final Problem. (And I never was fully satisfied with the manner in which Doyle revived Holmes in The Adventure of the Empty House.... I wish that one had been longer, too.) And yes, I realize most Holmes stories were short stories serialized in The Strand; don't anyone preach to me about that. I still say they were too short. ;)
Holmes seems to be somewhat of a jerk in some of the books, too. Most adaptions seem to tone that down a bit. I'm torn on what I think of that matter. On the one hand, you could argue that it's part of his character and shouldn't be gone. On the other hand, you could compare it to Gardner and his writing of Hamilton Burger, and how the TV series greatly improved on and remedied his cruel stereotype, and say that the Holmes adaptions are improving things by making him less of an arrogant jerk.
(And I pretty much refuse to accept that His Last Bow is how things ended, and that he and Watson didn't see each other for twenty years. That is too, too depressing. If Holmes wants to be a beekeeper, fine, but Watson should retire with him and they continue to stay together.)
I know most Holmes fans praise the books to high heaven, and certainly not without good and valid reasons. Doyle was a literary genius in many ways. And without the books, there wouldn't have been anything else. But I can't help it; I would usually rather watch a movie or a TV show episode than read the books.
Actually, that's the case for most things. I'm a very strange person who generally prefers the adaptions of anything to the original books. I've only ever found a handful of things where I hated the adaptions and/or loved the books best.
