Alistair Duncan's Blog, page 100

The hound is reborn

The cover for my next book drew some criticism when it was unveiled due to the hound that had been used. It was felt in some quarters that the hound was inappropriate and comments were made to that effect.

Fortunately the amount of criticism was trivial in comparison to the positive comments but I nevertheless decided to see if I could do something. My reason for this was simply that I have been something of a pedant myself and therefore I felt obliged to make an effort to address the concerns.

My boundless thanks go to Phil Cornell (of PHILIP CORNELL ILLUSTRATION PTY LTD) for riding to my rescue with a brand new and original hound. It should be pointed out that Phil was responsible for the cover illustration on my second book Close to Holmes.

Who is your favourite Holmes?

I once heard someone say on a documentary that "your first Sherlock Holmes is always your favourite". Similar sentiments have been expressed when it comes to other famous characters such as Doctor Who and James Bond or indeed any that have been portrayed by a number of actors. However is it true?

For me at least, the answer is no (and for all the examples).

[image error] The first Holmes I saw was Basil Rathbone's and I have considerable affection for him. I owe him my entire Sherlockian career (such as it is) as without him there is no guarantee that I would have become interested in Holmes at all. However I will never claim that he is my favourite or the best. As I pointed out in my earlier post, I consider his performance to have been damaged, if only a little, by that of Nigel Bruce.



[image error] For people who were children in the sixties a popular choice for best Holmes is Douglas Wilmer. This is an opinion shared by many in the upper echelons of The Sherlock Holmes Society of London. For those of us who came along later it is difficult to judge Wilmer as his outings are simply not shown and are nigh on impossible to obtain (they are I believe available on DVD in the US). Those of us in the UK (without multi-region players) can only catch parts via Youtube (and this may be legally dubious). I have not watched much but while the scripts seem good they just don't work for me. The dreaded spectre of personal taste rears its head again.



[image error] For most of us born in the 70s and later the ultimate Holmes is Jeremy Brett. For me personally it is because I was already interested in Holmes when the Granada series first aired and also because he was the first canonically accurate Holmes I had seen. It was his performance that enabled me to finally get through the written canon. He unlocked the stories for me and that is no exaggeration.

For later generations the appeal of Brett lies in the fact that, alongside Rathbone, he is the Holmes to be repeated most often on television so he is a familiar face even to Holmes fans not yet born when the series first aired.

The absence of a proper Holmes series since then has made it hard for any other actor to really lay claim to the Holmes crown. The new BBC series is good and the performances of the two leads are excellent but, in my opinion, the crown for the best Holmes can only ever be worn by a canonically and chronologically accurate Holmes. Until we get another one of those I feel that Mr Brett's crown is secure.

Let me know what you think?

Making a good screen Holmes

When we assess the pros and cons of any actor's portrayal of the great detective we tend to go on the following criteria (whether we realise it or not):

• Visual similarity to Sidney Paget's illustrations
• The actor's ability to bring the personality of Holmes to life
• His Watson's accuracy
• The chemistry between the two leads
• The canonical accuracy of the screenplay

I have listed these criteria in what I consider to be their order of importance.

Visual similarity to Sidney Paget's illustrationsAs superficial as it may seem, a strong resemblance to the Paget illustrations is a must. Is it really coincidence that the best on screen performances have been given by actors who looked the part?

[image error] Good portrayals:

• Arthur Wontner
• Basil Rathbone
• Douglas Wilmer
• Ian Richardson
• Jeremy Brett

[image error] Wontner, Rathbone and Richardson - Three of the best.
Bad portrayals:
 • Matt Frewer • Ben Syder
 • Richard Roxburgh

There have been good portrayals by actors that did not fit the Paget mould (such as Benedict Cumberbatch) but they are very much in the minority (and depend on the ability to meet all of the remaining criteria). It is also amusing how people who have never seen a Paget illustration seem to know when a Holmes looks right.
The actor's ability to bring the personality of Holmes to lifeSherlock Holmes has very definite character traits. His mood swings, his impatience with those less intelligent than himself and so on. However he has his softer, perhaps paternalistic, side and this needs to be shown. An extremely aggressive Holmes is as bad a mistake as a too emotional one. Christopher Plummer gave us an example of the latter in Murder by Decree.
His Watson's accuracySome people judge the quality of a Sherlock Holmes screen adaptation almost purely on the quality of the portrayal of Holmes but Watson is just as important. A bad Watson can drag a good Holmes down and a good Watson can go some way to rescuing a sub-standard Holmes.
Arthur Wontner, Basil Rathbone and Ian Richardson were all slightly dragged down by their Watsons. For Wontner, Ian Fleming was just too wet. For Rathbone, Nigel Bruce was too much of a buffoon and for Richardson, Donald Churchill was too pompous (and a buffoon).

[image error] Arthur Wontner and Ian Fleming (no not that Ian Fleming)
For the absolute zenith of accuracy we have to look no further than Jeremy Brett with his Watsons - David Burke and, later, Edward Hardwicke. These two men gave us portrayals of Watson that lacked accuracy in only one area. The area in question was age but the age of Holmes and Watson has been a constant issue since adaptations began.
The chemistry between the two leadsGood chemistry between Holmes and Watson is vital for a truly successful adaptation. Rathbone and Bruce had excellent chemistry and this went some way to offsetting the downsides of Bruce's Watson. Ian Richardson had an above-average Watson for his version of The Sign of Four and this went a long way towards making it one of the better adaptations. However, as a perfect example of how a bad Watson can drag an adaptation down, his Hound of the Baskervilles was much the poorer with Donald Churchill who lacked the all-important chemistry as well as being a poor Watson to boot.
Again Brett and Burke/Hardwicke demonstrate the best examples.
The canonical accuracy of the screenplayYes, as bizarre as it may seem, canonical accuracy comes bottom of the list. The most canonically perfect script will be ruined if the criteria above have not been well met. The recent Warner Brothers Sherlock Holmes demonstrated how a script littered with inaccuracies can actually work. Despite the script and the fact that Robert Downey Jr was hardly a clone of Paget's Holmes the film worked. This rested very much on the accuracy of Jude Law's Watson and the excellent chemistry between him and Downey Jr.
Another example is The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes with Rathbone and Bruce. The script was close to William Gillette's non-canonical stage play but succeeded largely because of Rathbone's excellent portrayal of Holmes (visually as well as in personality) and the excellent chemistry with Bruce. This formula held them in good stead through their largely non-canonical Universal films. This, I think, demonstrates, as well as it can be, how a canonical script, while desirable, is not mandatory if other criteria are met.

Review - The Outstanding Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes

Warning - contains some minor spoilers.

As I have stated once or twice before, I have two main requirements from a Sherlockian pastiche (or pastiche collection). The first requirement is that it must not involve crossovers with characters from the work of another author. The second is that it must inhabit the correct environment which means no demons, no fairies and no parallel worlds.

The Outstanding Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes by Gerard Kelly fulfils the first criterion and only once fails the second.

All-in-all this is an above-average collection and, in my opinion, is superior to The Lost Stories of Sherlock Holmes. Its superiority rests not so much in the quality of its plots or its presentation but in the fact that it is closer in style to the stories penned by Conan Doyle. I stress closer rather than close. It is also well edited which cannot always be said for other pastiches.

However, I do have a number of issues with the collection (and I recognise that these may just be matters of personal taste or me being something of a pedant).

There is an inappropriate level of informality displayed in some of the stories and this manifests itself in two main ways. The first is that the author occasionally has Watson refer to Holmes as Sherlock, which would never happen (except in the modern television series), and the author even refers to Holmes as Sherlock outside of character dialogue. To put this in perspective, I only noticed this in one story.

The second manifestation features Holmes occasionally referring to clients by their first names (usually at the client's request). Now even if a client did request this form of address I cannot see Conan Doyle's Holmes agreeing to it. Such a practice was against the convention of the time. To the best of my recollection, throughout the original canon, Holmes only ever addressed one adult by his first name and that was his brother Mycroft. The only other characters to be referred to by their first names were children such as Billy the pageboy. So having Holmes on first-name terms (if only one-way) with his clients just sounds and reads wrong.

There are other odd errors too. In The Riddle of the Carstairs Legacy Holmes's client successfully comes into an inheritance thanks to Holmes and the story concludes with his being referred to as Lord Carstairs. Given that we are told from quite early on that the man is illegitimate it would not be possible for him to claim the title even though he could be left the estate. This was a careless error on the author's part. The story was also very similar, in many respects, to Conan Doyle's Musgrave Ritual. The idea of a riddle/puzzle being the key to a family treasure/secret is common to both stories and Kelly uses it again in another of the stories in the book.

The Mysterious Disappearance of the Good Ship Alicia was a good scientific explanation of a maritime phenomenon but as a story it was somewhat dull being presented as a report by Holmes to the admiralty and consequently it was devoid of any character interaction.

The penultimate story in the collection is the one that failed for me and it was a shame as the idea was good. The storyline featured Mrs Hudson being saved by Holmes and Watson from the clutches of a fraudulent medium. It read very well but was let down by its postscript which had Watson encountering a 'real' ghost and assisting in laying it to rest.

This little slip is made up for by the concluding story The Peddler of Death in which a villain from earlier in the book returns. This helped the stories to come across as linked rather than isolated which was a very good idea.

The Paddington Pyromaniac was, for me, the stand-out story of the collection and I rather enjoyed The Mystery of the Locked Study. The former, in particular, really impressed me and was by far the most original story in the book.

One must also not overlook the illustrations which are also the work of the author. They are very good, are not overused but would have benefited from being more in the Paget mould.

Even though I consider this to be a superior book to The Lost Stories of Sherlock Holmes I would give it, in Amazon style, four stars which is the same as I awarded to the aforementioned book. The reason being that the other book's greater attention to cosmetic detail (in terms of visual style and illustrations) caused it to regain marks that it would have lost had the stories been measured on pure style and plot. I disagree with a reviewer on Amazon who said that you would not know that these stories had not been written by Conan Doyle if it had not been for the name on the cover. I think it is overtly clear that these are not by Conan Doyle. This is in part due to the negatives I have mentioned above. However, like scratches on a lens, they are possible to focus through and you should still find this book an enjoyable experience.

Where did you go Poland?

It would seem that the citizens of Poland were only interested in my post on the interior of 221B. Since the week it was posted the numbers have dropped to single figures and, once again, the U.S. and U.K are my main audience.

You be sure to come back Poland.

Review coming soon

I am nearly finished reading The Outstanding Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes. It has certainly proved an interesting read so far. My full review should appear in the next few days.
[image error]

A man after my own heart

It's nice to know that someone out there shares my thoughts on what it takes to create a good Sherlock Holmes pastiche.

10 Rules for Sherlockian Pastiches by Willis G. Frick.


http://members.cox.net/sherlock1/10.pdf

The Wayward Hound of the Baskervilles

Continuing with the theme of dramatic licence, it is a fact that the most dramatised Sherlock Holmes story is The Hound of the Baskervilles. There are many reasons for this which we won't go into here. However its popularity is also its curse as each time a screenwriter pens a film or television version they seem to feel compelled to put their own stamp on it. They presumably do this in an attempt to make their version stand out from the crowd but, in many cases, this ends up being damaging rather than beneficial to the finished product.
[image error]

The most famous of the early dramatisations is, of course, Basil Rathbone's. It is, in most respects, an excellent adaptation and its drawbacks are little more than niggles. Firstly, we have the poor casting of some of the characters. The most notable example of this miscasting is that of Doctor Mortimer. In fact Mortimer is the most consistently miscast character in screen versions of this story. In the original novel he is described thus:

"a young fellow under thirty, amiable, unambitious, absent-minded, and the possessor of a favourite dog"

However in almost all film versions that I have seen, with the exception of Granada's, the man cast has been over forty (sometimes close to fifty). The versions starring Rathbone, Cushing (the Hammer film), Richardson, Frewer and Roxburgh all miscast the role in this way.

The Rathbone and Roxburgh versions also featured the absurd idea of Mortimer's wife being a medium and consequently both featured a séance in which an attempt was made at contact with the spirit of Sir Charles Baskerville. I still remain unsure whether the scene was introduced in these films to acknowledge Conan Doyle's belief in spiritualism or to mock it (or perhaps one of each). Either way, such a scene was nonsense and added nothing to the story.

We also have the vanishing and multiplying Lyons family. Laura Lyons is not a significant character in terms of activity within the story but she is significant in that she is the reason for Sir Charles Baskerville being out on the night that he died. In the Roxburgh film she (and her father) do not feature at all and aspects of her motives and actions are transferred to Beryl Stapleton. I have since heard that this was due to these roles being cut from the final edit.

In Ian Richardson's version we gained a Lyons in the form of the lady's estranged husband (played in a typically understated way by Brian Blessed). The presence of the character only made sense because it allowed him to become a suspect in the murder of his wife (who does, of course, not die in the original story).

Turning our attention to the young Baronet Sir Henry we quickly find that he is another frequently miscast character. The choice of Richard Greene for the Rathbone version seemed to work despite the fact that he was British and noticeably devoid of a Canadian accent. The best examples I have seen of the casting for this role were those by Granada (Kristoffer Tabori) and the BBC's Roxburgh version (Matt Day). The significant aspect to both these versions was that the character was correctly described as Canadian. It is surely no coincidence that two of the worst castings of this role portrayed the character as an American. These versions being the Frewer version (with Jason London) and the Ian Richardson version (with Martin Shaw). Shaw of course is as British as they come and his American accent was a wonder to behold (and not in a good way). Also his Sir Henry followed an American pro-republican anti-aristocratic agenda by being highly dismissive of his title and making clear his intention of selling everything before going back to America (a large departure from the book and closer in many respects to what Stapleton hoped to do when he came into the estate after the planned death of Sir Henry). Given that Richardson's two films were American-driven this line was hardly surprising.

As a final note, after Mortimer and Sir Henry, the other most frequently miscast character was of course the hound itself. The absolute nadir for this had to be the Frewer version where we were presented with an angry mongrel which was about as far removed from a mastiff/bloodhound cross as it was possible to get.


[image error]

Dramatic licence - good or bad?

Here's a question. What do you all think about dramatic licence? Are you in the camp (as I used to be) who demand complete and total fidelity and adherence to the source novel, are you at the other extreme where you think anything goes or are you somewhere in between?

I, as stated, used to demand a rigid adherence to the source material and so was frequently annoyed, to some degree or other, by most Holmes dramatisations. Now I realise that this looks odd to anyone who knows me and also knows that the film that first got me interested in Holmes back in 1982 was Basil Rathbone's The Scarlet Claw. Anyone who has seen it will know how un-canonical it is.

Over time I have drifted from this strict position (but not too far). I still think that outrageous dramatic licence (which is more about a director/screenwriter's ego) should be discouraged but intelligent changes designed to suit the medium should be encouraged.

Please comment and let me know which adaptations of Holmes stories have pleased/irritated you the most

Greetings Poland

I would like to say hello to my readers in Poland. You have now become the second largest group of readers just behind the United States.