Managed to catch a few early Holmes episodes. The American series Sherlock Holmes was produced 1954-55 and ran for 39 episodes. The British series Sherlock Holmes (named with equal inventive boldness and sparkling wit) was made 1964-65 and there were 13 episodes.
In the former Holmes is played by Ronald Howard, son of the legendary Leslie Howard, and Watson by H. Marion-Crawford. The series seems quite cheaply produced, there are only a couple of guest actors per episode and virtually all the scenes are indoors, in sets that bear remarkably little or no resemblance at all to Victorian rooms. The scripts are straightforward and tend to lean, very heavily, on redundant banter between Holmes and Watson and Lestrade. Very likely to save money. The crimes are nothing to write home about and seldom seem like cases that would merit the involvement of the great Sherlock Holmes. And what's more, nary a whiff of the Canon is to be observed, but for one or two exceptions. No - new cases for a new Televison Holmes. Lestrade is of course a dimwitted bungler who, upon receiving a case, immediately sets off for Baker Street.
This sort of thing always annoys me greatly. Where's the glory in outwitting Lestrade if the man is so blatantly unfit to tie his own shoe-laces? I ask you.
The best episode of the ones I've so far seen is The Case of the French Interpreter. It is of course The Greek Interpreter but for some mysterious reason done with a French one instead. The script follows the original pretty faithfully, a shrewd move that. Now for once we get genuine tension and excitement, interesting characters and bizarre situations, there's a dynamic in the episode and even some welcome outdoor shots, so the look of this one is far fresher and more lively than is usual. Even the acting seems superior. Of course they've cut corners here as well, no Mycroft for instance, but the result is by no means to be frowned at.
Howard as Holmes looks startlingly like a young Rathbone, or to be even more precise, like a cross between Rathbone and a young Roddy McDowall. He's tall, he's got a profile and is obviously upper crust. It is, however, dashed hard to say if he's a good, bad or indifferent Holmes. This is because the scripts give him precious little to work with. He doesn't dazzle but neither does he stink. Compared to Rathbone he lacks energy and that wonderfully superior attitude, the scathing wit that makes Rathbone's crisp delivery enjoyable even when he's at his hammiest. One does rather suspect that Howard was given the role for his looks, and famous name. Alas.
The Steinbrunner-Michael book on Holmes films calls H. Marion-Crawford's Watson one of the best Watsons. At first this baffled me slightly as I found him a sort of lighter version of Nigel Bruce - less stupid and annoying but still of no use whatsoever to Holmes. And that's what he is, quite frankly, but when he does the narrative bits he's a different man altogether: he's intelligent, sharp, alert and he's got a beautifully mellifluous voice. A pity that he's made to play Watson as a Brucean buffoon the rest of the time. A great pity.
In the UK Douglas Wilmer is considered to be a very fine Holmes indeed. As I've only seen the two first episodes of the series, I have a very incomplete grasp of his performance and of course of the series as a whole.
The first episode, The Speckled Band, I find poorly written and rather boring. It opens with the events leading to the death of Helen Stoner's sister in mysterious circumstances, on the eve of her marriage - and then jumps ahead a couple years to Miss Stoner getting engaged. And we have the stepfather acting suspiciously all over the place, playing the heavy for all he's worth, bullying and intimidating the poor girl at every turn. At which point I'm almost ready to give up. The Speckled Band is always a sure thing. How is it even possible to muck it up? Well we get Holmes, eventually, and the brilliant scene with the sinister Dr. Grimesby Roylott barging in at Baker Street and bending pokers. Then there are more tedious bits with Holmes and Watson discussing the case, and touching upon nothing of remarkable interest or everlasting brilliance. After which they travel to the Hall. And solve the mystery and save the day. Blimey. Hooray for Captain Spaulding.
Not a particularly good episode nor a felicitous beginning for a series. The script drags and both Wilmer and his Watson Nigel Stock are clearly not at ease with their roles. But mostly it's the script. The script doesn't give them anything interesting or worthwhile to do until the very end. And the indoor sets are stuffy and look cheap. The camera work is primitive and doesn't exactly enhance the mood, quite the contrary.
The second episode, The Illustrious Client, is a great improvement. The script is tighter and follows the original story more closely. The sets are lighter and more airy but don't really look like authentic period rooms. Well, that's what Television was like in those days, one supposes. Wilmer and Stock are more comfortable with their parts and seem to have more confidence both in themselves and the production. There's a lively scene in a music hall - which does go on for rather too long and does seem a bit self-indulgent, to be honest, but who's complaining - and one in a Turkish bath. So we have scenery and location which is always nice.
Wilmer as Holmes seems merrier than Holmes usually is depicted as, a man of good cheer and excellent spirit. His profile is perhaps less aquiline than might be and his nose not quite as imperial a beak as Paget would have us believe. Still, those things are secondary. Unfortunately both these episodes prove to be rotten when it comes to judging Wilmer's performance or the perspicaciousness of his Holmes as he isn't given enough Holmesian things to do for one to pass the sentence. In this episode much of the action is given to Watson as Holmes is viciously beaten up by two thugs.
Stock's Watson seems pretty much all right. He isn't a stupid man nor a silly duffer, and neither should he be. Watson is a man of action, a soldier, a doctor and an author. He is an asset to Holmes, otherwise why should Holmes keep him around and rely on him? But in most productions Watson is only kept around for Holmes to show how jolly clever he is compared to Watson. Here the same goes as for Lestrade - where's the merit in being cleverer than a dunce? There is no merit. It only makes Holmes seem a pretentious show-off and, well, a bit dim himself. The stupider the Watson, the stupider the Holmes.
Interesting fact about Douglas Wilmer: he went to Stonyhurst. Stonyhurst is of course the Jesuit school to which Doyle himself went.
And lastly a bit of Rathbone and Bruce. Roy William Neill's The Pearl of Death (1944 - the seventh entry in the Universal series and Rathbone's ninth appearance as the wizard of 221b) is ostensibly based on The Six Napoleons and parts of it actually are, too. As Rathbone movies goes this one isn't too bad. It definitely has its moments, I'll grant you that. It does, however, make Holmes look like a pratt. On several occasions. Which is quite unforgivable.
In order to show how vulnerable a museum's electric system guarding a priceless pearl (a pearl having once belonged to the blood-thirsty Borgias and with an equally bloody history) is, Holmes switches it off on the sly. Purely to demonstrate the folly of the museum's manager. The villain, who is lurking about, just outside the door, of course, hears this and goes off and pinches the unprotected pearl. And Holmes ends up with egg on his face. Now this is a really bad move by the script writer. Why on earth does it have to be Holmes's foolishness that results in the theft? It's utterly pointless and weakens Holmes immeasurably. For what purpose, I ask? And answer there came none.
Well anyway, the thief hides the pearl - and this is where the motif of the six Napoleons comes in - and we have a race between Holmes and the villains as to who will find it first. The best thing in the movie are definitely the villains: head villain Giles Conover (played by Miles Mander - who was the murderer in the previous Holmes movie The Scarlet Claw), his fetching helpmate Naomi Drake (Evelyn Ankers) and especially the gang's gorilla known as The Creeper (the grotesquely misshapen Rondo Hatton).
The Creeper's modus operandi is ghastly. When the villains have established the location of a Napoleon statue,The Creeper breaks in, breaks his hapless victim's back with his bare hands, always at the third vertebrae, then smashes all the china in the house in a maniacal frenzy. The Creeper is as terrible an apparition as one may ever wish to see; this because of Hatton's inhuman affliction, acromegaly, which transformed him inch by inch into something unpleasantly akin to Frankenstein's monster and - a few years after the film - finally killed him. The genius of the film is that we never really see the creeper except for a few shady glimpses and quick shadows - until the very end, that is.
The ending is a bit silly and again makes Holmes look bad. He has Conover at gun point and still manages to loose his gun to the criminal in an extremely silly way. Making him look like a right amateur. Holmes then, somehow knowing that The Creeper carries a torch for Naomi who's in police custody, gets Conover to say that he doesn't care that she goes to prison, she or her fate are of absolutely no importance whatsoever. Whereupon The Creeper breaks Conover's back and Holmes shoots The Creeper.
There is some amount of Sherlockian sleuthing in the movie but mostly it's thrills and dramatic trickery. The atmosphere and scenery are rather better than in an average Rathbone film and The Creeper is obviously a great asset - quite unforgettable in his exquisite hideousness and tragic deformity. It is really he who makes the movie. Or breaks it, if you'll forgive a foolish pun.
But The Pearl of Death does make Holmes look like a fool. And that's no good neither to man nor beast.
28/01/2010
22/01/2010
Rue Morgue goes Ape
Robert Florey's 1932 movie Murders in the Rue Morgue is a quite curious movie. The Poe connection is, to put it bluntly, tenuous - not to say sporadic. There is a Dupin in the movie, there is an ape, there are killings. However, Dupin isn't Poe's Chevalier Auguste Dupin but a medical student Pierre Dupin. The murders aren't really murders at all, not actually, but the unfortunate result of ill-guided medical experiments. The ape isn't an orangutang but a gorilla. And the gorilla, brilliantly, is "played" by a chimpanzee. And sometimes a bloke in a skin. Obviously.
Paris, 1845. Dr Mirakle, played by Bela Lugosi with menacing simian eye-brows, displays his gorilla at a side-show. Really his ambition is to prove that man and ape are close relatives, that there's such a thing as evolution. This he tries to do by abducting young and particularly pretty women and mixing their blood with simian blood. Unfortunately his experiments tend to go awry and the young ladies loose their lives. He gets rid of their corpses in the Seine. Dupin has noticed that there's something fishy about the young women that turn up dead in the river. He wants specimens of their blood. At the same time Dr Mirakle has his eye on Dupin's beloved.
Dupin and his beloved Camille have been to the side-show and seen Mirakle's gorilla. The gorilla even snatched Camille's bonnet, so Mirakle had to send her a new one.
Dupin seeks up Mirakle an questions him. Mirakle doesn't want to talk about his experiments and claims he's just off to Munich. Dupin finds out that this isn't true and follows Mirakle to his lair on, wait for it - the Rue Morgue. He hears Mirakle converse with his gorilla (this time played by an actor in a gorilla skin, not terribly convincingly). Later that evening, when Dupin's at Camille's, Mirakle stands down in the street stalking them. When Dupin's gone Mirakle knocks her up and tries to lure her out but she refuses. Mirakle returns to his carriage where the gorilla awaits him. The gorilla isn't pleased. It seems like the gorilla gives him his orders!
Simultaneously Dupin has an astonishing breakthrough - it's the blood of a gorilla! The girls died because a gorilla's blood was injected in their veins! (Which seems like a slightly unlikely discovery in 1845. Or do I mean utterly impossible?) At the same moment he realises Camille is in danger! (Which also seem a bit unlikely - what on earth is the connection, one wonders?) So he rushes off.
Meanwhile Mirakle stands on the street and watches how his gorilla scales the wall of Camille's house. (Which seems highly illogical as all the previous victims have been procured by Mirakle for scientific experiments, but apparently - this time it's personal.) Like a miniature King Kong the gorilla heaves himself up on Camille's balcony and enters her bed chamber. Camille sees the gorilla (now again it's a chimp), screams her head off and faints. Camille's mother rushes to the room. But, oh no, the gorilla is still there. Not to worry, Dupin's on his way.
But it's too late. When he breaks down the door the gorilla has already made off with Camille. Oh the anguish! Oh the agony! Why will no one believe that this is serious? our hero moans to the thick gendarmes. Does nobody understand that she's in danger?
Now we come to bastardized Poe country, something actually from the original story, with witnesses being questioned about what language the abductor spoke. Was it Italian? Yes, says one witness, a German, absolutely Italian. Or was it Danish? Yes, says another witness, an Italian, definitely Danish. No, says a third witness, a Dane, it was in fact German!
At last our hero is brought out to be heard by the prefect. He's in chains, an obvious suspect. He knows who committed the murder: an ape! What murder, the prefect says. Dupin explains that there were two women in the room and the door was locked and bolted. Therefore, Dupin explains, one woman was carried away and the other murdered (which seems like an utterly unreasonable deduction on the face of it). What ho - the room is searched and Camille's mother found stuck up the chimney.
Still nobody believes Dupin. An ape? No. He must be crazy. Before the gendarmes drag him away he discovers the hair the old woman has clutched in her fist - not human hair but ape hair! Look! Therefore he must be telling the truth. The prefect nods his head in perfect agreement. Yes, it must be an ape.
Back in Mirakle's secret lair the doctor makes a happy discovery: her blood is perfect for his experiment! The chimp, behind bars again, goes ape with joy and extasy. But Dupin has already led the gendarmes there. No! Dr. Mirakle shouts to his simian assistant - hold them off till I'm ready!
The gorilla breaks out of his cage. Back in to your cage! Mirakle orders. The gorilla attacks Mirakle, apparently in an attempt to protect Camille. The gendarmes break in. The gorilla picks up Camille and carries her off, again, now to the roof. Somebody spots them and the gendarmes and the rabble start following them. Lots of shots of the gorilla transporting Camille King Kong like over roofs.
There really is no escape for the ape. Or is there? Our hero Dupin grabs a pistol off a gendarme. The gorilla is in a cul-de-sac. Dupin climbs up on the roof. The gorilla drops Camille and goes for Dupin. Dupin fires and the gorilla is hit and rolls off the roof into the Seine. Hooray - the day is saved by our brave and resourceful Dupin!
What can one say? Want rubbish dialogue, childish plotting, hammy acting, sloppy sets? This is your movie. The ape that falls in love with the beautiful woman and abducts her. How very original. But if they wanted to rip off King Kong why did they have to soil Poe? Then something starts nagging me, a little odd feeling somewhere at the back of my skull. So I check my facts. This movie was in fact made before King Kong! Amazing. So is it King Kong that rips off Murders in the Rue Morgue? Now there's a thought.
An interesting little fact: Florey and Lugosi were originally slated to do Frankenstein, Florey to direct and Lugosi to play the scientist Henry Frankenstein. As the directing job went to James Whale and the role to Colin Clive, Florey and Lugosi were given this picture instead. Frankenstein was a hug hit and became a classic, this one wasn't and didn't. Another interesting little fact: additional dialogue was supplied by none other than John Huston. Yet another interesting little fact: the cinematographer Karl Freund had previously shot such classics as Der Golem and Metropolis. And he would soon direct The Mummy with Boris Karloff. Maybe it's due to him that certain portions of Murders in the Rue Morgue remind one a bit of Das Kabinett des Dr. Caligari. But, honestly, I don't understand the claims that the film actully seems like a piece of German expressionism. It doesn't. It truly doesn't.
Worth noting too, perhaps, that Florey directed the first Marx Brothers film Cocoanuts and wrote the screenplay to the 1933 Sherlock Holmes movie A Study in Scarlet with Reginald Owen as Holmes.
Any which way one looks at it, Murders in the Rue Morgue is definitely worth a look. But not much more. There's nowhere near the emotional impact of King Kong or the intellectual impact of Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue. This movie is sheer exploitation, not even clever exploitation, but still somewhat amusing.
Paris, 1845. Dr Mirakle, played by Bela Lugosi with menacing simian eye-brows, displays his gorilla at a side-show. Really his ambition is to prove that man and ape are close relatives, that there's such a thing as evolution. This he tries to do by abducting young and particularly pretty women and mixing their blood with simian blood. Unfortunately his experiments tend to go awry and the young ladies loose their lives. He gets rid of their corpses in the Seine. Dupin has noticed that there's something fishy about the young women that turn up dead in the river. He wants specimens of their blood. At the same time Dr Mirakle has his eye on Dupin's beloved.
Dupin and his beloved Camille have been to the side-show and seen Mirakle's gorilla. The gorilla even snatched Camille's bonnet, so Mirakle had to send her a new one.
Dupin seeks up Mirakle an questions him. Mirakle doesn't want to talk about his experiments and claims he's just off to Munich. Dupin finds out that this isn't true and follows Mirakle to his lair on, wait for it - the Rue Morgue. He hears Mirakle converse with his gorilla (this time played by an actor in a gorilla skin, not terribly convincingly). Later that evening, when Dupin's at Camille's, Mirakle stands down in the street stalking them. When Dupin's gone Mirakle knocks her up and tries to lure her out but she refuses. Mirakle returns to his carriage where the gorilla awaits him. The gorilla isn't pleased. It seems like the gorilla gives him his orders!
Simultaneously Dupin has an astonishing breakthrough - it's the blood of a gorilla! The girls died because a gorilla's blood was injected in their veins! (Which seems like a slightly unlikely discovery in 1845. Or do I mean utterly impossible?) At the same moment he realises Camille is in danger! (Which also seem a bit unlikely - what on earth is the connection, one wonders?) So he rushes off.
Meanwhile Mirakle stands on the street and watches how his gorilla scales the wall of Camille's house. (Which seems highly illogical as all the previous victims have been procured by Mirakle for scientific experiments, but apparently - this time it's personal.) Like a miniature King Kong the gorilla heaves himself up on Camille's balcony and enters her bed chamber. Camille sees the gorilla (now again it's a chimp), screams her head off and faints. Camille's mother rushes to the room. But, oh no, the gorilla is still there. Not to worry, Dupin's on his way.
But it's too late. When he breaks down the door the gorilla has already made off with Camille. Oh the anguish! Oh the agony! Why will no one believe that this is serious? our hero moans to the thick gendarmes. Does nobody understand that she's in danger?
Now we come to bastardized Poe country, something actually from the original story, with witnesses being questioned about what language the abductor spoke. Was it Italian? Yes, says one witness, a German, absolutely Italian. Or was it Danish? Yes, says another witness, an Italian, definitely Danish. No, says a third witness, a Dane, it was in fact German!
At last our hero is brought out to be heard by the prefect. He's in chains, an obvious suspect. He knows who committed the murder: an ape! What murder, the prefect says. Dupin explains that there were two women in the room and the door was locked and bolted. Therefore, Dupin explains, one woman was carried away and the other murdered (which seems like an utterly unreasonable deduction on the face of it). What ho - the room is searched and Camille's mother found stuck up the chimney.
Still nobody believes Dupin. An ape? No. He must be crazy. Before the gendarmes drag him away he discovers the hair the old woman has clutched in her fist - not human hair but ape hair! Look! Therefore he must be telling the truth. The prefect nods his head in perfect agreement. Yes, it must be an ape.
Back in Mirakle's secret lair the doctor makes a happy discovery: her blood is perfect for his experiment! The chimp, behind bars again, goes ape with joy and extasy. But Dupin has already led the gendarmes there. No! Dr. Mirakle shouts to his simian assistant - hold them off till I'm ready!
The gorilla breaks out of his cage. Back in to your cage! Mirakle orders. The gorilla attacks Mirakle, apparently in an attempt to protect Camille. The gendarmes break in. The gorilla picks up Camille and carries her off, again, now to the roof. Somebody spots them and the gendarmes and the rabble start following them. Lots of shots of the gorilla transporting Camille King Kong like over roofs.
There really is no escape for the ape. Or is there? Our hero Dupin grabs a pistol off a gendarme. The gorilla is in a cul-de-sac. Dupin climbs up on the roof. The gorilla drops Camille and goes for Dupin. Dupin fires and the gorilla is hit and rolls off the roof into the Seine. Hooray - the day is saved by our brave and resourceful Dupin!
What can one say? Want rubbish dialogue, childish plotting, hammy acting, sloppy sets? This is your movie. The ape that falls in love with the beautiful woman and abducts her. How very original. But if they wanted to rip off King Kong why did they have to soil Poe? Then something starts nagging me, a little odd feeling somewhere at the back of my skull. So I check my facts. This movie was in fact made before King Kong! Amazing. So is it King Kong that rips off Murders in the Rue Morgue? Now there's a thought.
An interesting little fact: Florey and Lugosi were originally slated to do Frankenstein, Florey to direct and Lugosi to play the scientist Henry Frankenstein. As the directing job went to James Whale and the role to Colin Clive, Florey and Lugosi were given this picture instead. Frankenstein was a hug hit and became a classic, this one wasn't and didn't. Another interesting little fact: additional dialogue was supplied by none other than John Huston. Yet another interesting little fact: the cinematographer Karl Freund had previously shot such classics as Der Golem and Metropolis. And he would soon direct The Mummy with Boris Karloff. Maybe it's due to him that certain portions of Murders in the Rue Morgue remind one a bit of Das Kabinett des Dr. Caligari. But, honestly, I don't understand the claims that the film actully seems like a piece of German expressionism. It doesn't. It truly doesn't.
Worth noting too, perhaps, that Florey directed the first Marx Brothers film Cocoanuts and wrote the screenplay to the 1933 Sherlock Holmes movie A Study in Scarlet with Reginald Owen as Holmes.
Any which way one looks at it, Murders in the Rue Morgue is definitely worth a look. But not much more. There's nowhere near the emotional impact of King Kong or the intellectual impact of Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue. This movie is sheer exploitation, not even clever exploitation, but still somewhat amusing.
17/01/2010
Sherlok Kholms (i doktor Vatson)
A Russian Sherlock Holmes? Or, to put it bluntly, a Soviet Sherlock Holmes? That doesn't sound very promising.
Surprisingly enough it works. Jolly well, in fact.
It is Conan Doyle in a charmingly Chekovian setting; the pace is leisurely, there's no hurry, there's never any hurry, and the mood is gentle and dreamy and unmistakably Slavic. Mrs. Hudson doesn't serve the tea from a samovar and they don't take it from tall glasses, not quite, and they do drink whisky instead of vodka, or at least profess so to do; yet one rather expects the next client to walk in to be, not Miss Morstan or Dr. Mortimer, but Arkadina or Trigorin. And the hapless detective in desperate need of Sherlock's assistance not to be Lestrade but Porfiry Petrovich.
St. Petersburg does not a London make - a Leningrad even less so. Still, the odd thing is, somehow it doesn't disturb one. Not a bit. Having all these obviously Imperial Russian and supremely Baltic buildings as the backdrop of Holmes and his investigations just adds to the atmosphere, making it even more cosy. And the Neva really does present an acceptable and suitably foggy substitute for the Thames.
The core of the piece is Vitaly Solomin's Watson - a starry-eyed and emotional creature who weeps silently when he thinks he's lost the love of his life, but who's brave and trustworthy when the need arises. Vasily Livanov's Holmes is acerbic and quirky and softer by far than most of his western colleagues, though not too soft. There is steel in him, and a lot of humour too. He's quite the merry prankster and really a child at heart. Which is interesting and does justice to Doyle. Holmes is indeed the imperfect man: in some ways over-evolved, in others still a child.
The scripts are usually quite dependable and true to the original tales, sometimes fusing together two stories. The first episode starts off as A Study in Scarlet and ends up as The Speckled Band. It works, A Study being such an uneven piece with the dreadful back-story spoiling all the fun in the end. Better just scrap it. The Agra Treasure is basically The Sign of Four with A Scandal in Bohema thrown in somewhere in the middle - probably to balance the thing. In the first story Watson falls in love, in the second Holmes does, which in its way works out quite nicely. There is one serious drawback. The script focuses so intensely on love that the crime of Major Sholto and Captain Morstan is never explained. Nor are the original circumstances of the Agra treasure and how it fell into the hands of Jonathan Small and his companions. In this version Jonathan Small is just an escaped convict who turns up in London claiming that the treasure belongs to him and his fellows. A bit shabby that.
The Hound of the Baskervilles is an odd little piece. For me it steers too near downright parody, especially in the form of Nikita Mikhalkov's Sir Henry Baskerville. The relation between Sir Henry and Barrymore is pure comedy and sabotages the dramatic element of the plot. It becomes embarrassingly campy. The same goes, basically, for Dr. Mortimer. Apart from that it isn't a bad version of the book even if there is precious little suspense or even dramaturgy. Not glorious but adequate. The setting is eerie and a bit off, though not necessarily in a bad way. But Devon it ain't. Nor a mire.
The Final Problem works extremely well and the shots of the raging waterfall are stunning. Moriarty is icy and sadistic and has a frightening hump. Sometimes he's over the top but by and large it works. Moriarty's henchman who's always around shadowing Holmes and Watson is a lurid cross between Mr. Hyde and Lon Chaney's Wolf Man. The King of Blackmail (based on The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton) is a delightfully reverential version of the original story. Good stuff.
By and large the Russian Sherlock Holmes series is a little gem and truly a breath of fresh air after the occasionally over-heated and sometimes suffocatingly histrionic Granada series. Its strengths, however, are its weaknesses. Its strong on mood, atmosphere, leisurely pacing. That means that there isn't always time to develop the plot as it ought to be developed. So things have to be cut or ignored. Important things. But the things it does it usually does remarkably well and sincerely. And with its heart in the right place.
I especially like the neoclassical semi-Prokofievian or mock-Stravinskian theme music by Vladimir Dashkevitch. Somehow it manages to fuse Victorian London with Imperial St. Petersburg and set the mood perfectly, not forgetting a slight measure of healthy irony.
Oh, back to The Final Problem. I'd previously heard some radio plays with John Gielgud as Holmes and Ralph Richardson as his Watson. Not bad, I quite like the pair even if Gielgud sometimes may come across as a bit academic and prissy and Richardson occasionally half sounds as if he's having a nod at his club. The Final Problem is hugely interesting because Moriarty is played by none other than the suave and urbane Orson Welles, who pours a out a sound dose of venom and concealed menace with each and every one of his softly spoken words. He's the real star of the piece. The more genteel he sounds, the more dangerous one senses that he is. Which makes Orson Welles's Moriarty very dangerous indeed.
On the face of it Gielgud and Welles are an unlikely couple of mortal foes. Actually seeing them struggle to the death would probably convince no one. Hearing them do it works beautifully. And Welles makes such a lovely villain. He's much better as Moriarty than as Holmes. The effect of the play is somewhat tempered by Richardson in the end. Reading his eulogy he sounds a bit as if he were reading about a cricket match in which he wasn't particularly interested.
But Welles's Moriarty - ah 'tis a rare and beautiful thing indeed!
Surprisingly enough it works. Jolly well, in fact.
It is Conan Doyle in a charmingly Chekovian setting; the pace is leisurely, there's no hurry, there's never any hurry, and the mood is gentle and dreamy and unmistakably Slavic. Mrs. Hudson doesn't serve the tea from a samovar and they don't take it from tall glasses, not quite, and they do drink whisky instead of vodka, or at least profess so to do; yet one rather expects the next client to walk in to be, not Miss Morstan or Dr. Mortimer, but Arkadina or Trigorin. And the hapless detective in desperate need of Sherlock's assistance not to be Lestrade but Porfiry Petrovich.
St. Petersburg does not a London make - a Leningrad even less so. Still, the odd thing is, somehow it doesn't disturb one. Not a bit. Having all these obviously Imperial Russian and supremely Baltic buildings as the backdrop of Holmes and his investigations just adds to the atmosphere, making it even more cosy. And the Neva really does present an acceptable and suitably foggy substitute for the Thames.
The core of the piece is Vitaly Solomin's Watson - a starry-eyed and emotional creature who weeps silently when he thinks he's lost the love of his life, but who's brave and trustworthy when the need arises. Vasily Livanov's Holmes is acerbic and quirky and softer by far than most of his western colleagues, though not too soft. There is steel in him, and a lot of humour too. He's quite the merry prankster and really a child at heart. Which is interesting and does justice to Doyle. Holmes is indeed the imperfect man: in some ways over-evolved, in others still a child.
The scripts are usually quite dependable and true to the original tales, sometimes fusing together two stories. The first episode starts off as A Study in Scarlet and ends up as The Speckled Band. It works, A Study being such an uneven piece with the dreadful back-story spoiling all the fun in the end. Better just scrap it. The Agra Treasure is basically The Sign of Four with A Scandal in Bohema thrown in somewhere in the middle - probably to balance the thing. In the first story Watson falls in love, in the second Holmes does, which in its way works out quite nicely. There is one serious drawback. The script focuses so intensely on love that the crime of Major Sholto and Captain Morstan is never explained. Nor are the original circumstances of the Agra treasure and how it fell into the hands of Jonathan Small and his companions. In this version Jonathan Small is just an escaped convict who turns up in London claiming that the treasure belongs to him and his fellows. A bit shabby that.
The Hound of the Baskervilles is an odd little piece. For me it steers too near downright parody, especially in the form of Nikita Mikhalkov's Sir Henry Baskerville. The relation between Sir Henry and Barrymore is pure comedy and sabotages the dramatic element of the plot. It becomes embarrassingly campy. The same goes, basically, for Dr. Mortimer. Apart from that it isn't a bad version of the book even if there is precious little suspense or even dramaturgy. Not glorious but adequate. The setting is eerie and a bit off, though not necessarily in a bad way. But Devon it ain't. Nor a mire.
The Final Problem works extremely well and the shots of the raging waterfall are stunning. Moriarty is icy and sadistic and has a frightening hump. Sometimes he's over the top but by and large it works. Moriarty's henchman who's always around shadowing Holmes and Watson is a lurid cross between Mr. Hyde and Lon Chaney's Wolf Man. The King of Blackmail (based on The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton) is a delightfully reverential version of the original story. Good stuff.
By and large the Russian Sherlock Holmes series is a little gem and truly a breath of fresh air after the occasionally over-heated and sometimes suffocatingly histrionic Granada series. Its strengths, however, are its weaknesses. Its strong on mood, atmosphere, leisurely pacing. That means that there isn't always time to develop the plot as it ought to be developed. So things have to be cut or ignored. Important things. But the things it does it usually does remarkably well and sincerely. And with its heart in the right place.
I especially like the neoclassical semi-Prokofievian or mock-Stravinskian theme music by Vladimir Dashkevitch. Somehow it manages to fuse Victorian London with Imperial St. Petersburg and set the mood perfectly, not forgetting a slight measure of healthy irony.
Oh, back to The Final Problem. I'd previously heard some radio plays with John Gielgud as Holmes and Ralph Richardson as his Watson. Not bad, I quite like the pair even if Gielgud sometimes may come across as a bit academic and prissy and Richardson occasionally half sounds as if he's having a nod at his club. The Final Problem is hugely interesting because Moriarty is played by none other than the suave and urbane Orson Welles, who pours a out a sound dose of venom and concealed menace with each and every one of his softly spoken words. He's the real star of the piece. The more genteel he sounds, the more dangerous one senses that he is. Which makes Orson Welles's Moriarty very dangerous indeed.
On the face of it Gielgud and Welles are an unlikely couple of mortal foes. Actually seeing them struggle to the death would probably convince no one. Hearing them do it works beautifully. And Welles makes such a lovely villain. He's much better as Moriarty than as Holmes. The effect of the play is somewhat tempered by Richardson in the end. Reading his eulogy he sounds a bit as if he were reading about a cricket match in which he wasn't particularly interested.
But Welles's Moriarty - ah 'tis a rare and beautiful thing indeed!
16/01/2010
Reynolds
When he was in hospital in Baltimore, in a state of great confusion, slowly but surely dying, Edgar Allan Poe kept calling out for Reynolds. The resident physician John Moran described his end in the following manner: "When I returned I found him in a violent delirium, resisting the efforts of two nurses to keep him in bed. This state continued until Saturday evening when he commenced calling for one 'Reynolds,' which he did through the night up to three on Sunday morning. At this time a very decided change began to affect him. Having become enfeebled from exertion he became quiet and seemed to rest for a short time, then gently moving his head he said 'Lord help my poor soul' and expired."
So, who was this Reynolds? Nobody seems to know. Jeffrey Meyers, in his biography, suggests Poe meant Jeremiah Reynolds whose book he reviewed in 1837 and later used as a source for his own book about the travels Arthur Gordon Pym. Meyers goes on to suggest that during his last hours Poe probably hallucinated along the lines of the last sequence of Pym: "And now we rushed into the embraces of the cataract, where a chasm threw itself open to receive us. But there arose in our pathway a shrouded human figure, very far larger in its proportions than any dweller among men. And the hue of the skin of the figure was of the perfect whiteness of the snow." Poetic but a bit far-fetched.
Peter Ackroyd, in his A Life Cut Short, observes that there was indeed an election official called Reynolds at the very Hotel in front of which Poe was discovered. There has been much speculation on Poe's involvement in some kind of election scam. Possible, but a bit uninteresting.
The Norwegian author Nikolaj Frobenius (who a few years ago wrote the quite excellent screenplay to the film Insomnia) comes up with a far more fascinating solution in his novel Jeg skal vise dere frykten. In the book Reynolds is in fact a slave belonging to Poe's foster father John Allan, an albino shunned by the other slaves, a man without a place in the world. In that respect much like Poe himself, an eternal outsider. Poe befriends the slave Reynolds, who in fact, unbeknownst to Poe, is Allan's bastard son. Poe reads the lad his early stories and young Reynolds, with his twisted and tortured soul, finds great relief in them.
Poe teaches Reynolds to read. They run away together, escaping the clutches of the tyrannical Allan. Reynolds idolizes Poe but very soon there comes the inevitable parting of the ways. Their friendship does not end well. Poe gets on with his life, such as it is.
Later, when Poe's grisly tales of murder and madness start appearing in national magazines, Reynolds begins his murder spree based on Poe's stories. The bloodier the story, the better.
There is an interesting theme of doppelgangerism in the novel, with Reynolds as Poe's evil twin (and in a way they are brothers, both being Allan's "sons"), his very own William Wilson, whose skin may be white as snow (the image at the end of Pym) but whose soul is blacker than black. Poe is the day, Reynolds is the night. What feverish nightmares Poe sublimates and exorcises by putting them on paper, Reynolds performs and realizes. Poe is the mind, Reynolds is the flesh. Reynolds is Poe's nightmare personified, his fears and anxieties come to life, running amok and causing destruction and wreaking havoc.
Ingenious idea.
It is eminently clear they cannot both exist. Not ultimately. Therefore Poe attempts to shoot Reynolds and bury him alive. Reynolds doesn't die. Reynolds uses subtler methods to try to kill Poe. He starts hiding bottles of whiskey among Poe's belongings. Poe cannot resist. In the end Reynolds and the bottles get him. His mind cannot protect itself against the attacks of his flesh.
Despite its many good qualities Jeg skal vise dere frykten isn't a frightfully good book. I found it curiously bland and it left me slightly confused, as if it didn't quite know if it wanted to be a literary novel, a biographical novel, a tale of horror or a plain thriller. Probably it wanted to be all of them at the same time, but not really succeeding in being any of them. Of recent novels delving in Poe's demise I much prefer Matthew Pearl's The Poe Shadow. A rather good literary novel about the latter days of Poe is John May's Poe and Fanny.
Though of course none of them solve the mystery of Reynolds. Neither did Frobenius but his take on the mystery is by far the most interesting I've come across.
On the other hand, taking into account Poe's state, it's quite likely that the name Reynolds is merely the confused rambling of an extremely delirious mind, signifying absolutely nothing.
So, who was this Reynolds? Nobody seems to know. Jeffrey Meyers, in his biography, suggests Poe meant Jeremiah Reynolds whose book he reviewed in 1837 and later used as a source for his own book about the travels Arthur Gordon Pym. Meyers goes on to suggest that during his last hours Poe probably hallucinated along the lines of the last sequence of Pym: "And now we rushed into the embraces of the cataract, where a chasm threw itself open to receive us. But there arose in our pathway a shrouded human figure, very far larger in its proportions than any dweller among men. And the hue of the skin of the figure was of the perfect whiteness of the snow." Poetic but a bit far-fetched.
Peter Ackroyd, in his A Life Cut Short, observes that there was indeed an election official called Reynolds at the very Hotel in front of which Poe was discovered. There has been much speculation on Poe's involvement in some kind of election scam. Possible, but a bit uninteresting.
The Norwegian author Nikolaj Frobenius (who a few years ago wrote the quite excellent screenplay to the film Insomnia) comes up with a far more fascinating solution in his novel Jeg skal vise dere frykten. In the book Reynolds is in fact a slave belonging to Poe's foster father John Allan, an albino shunned by the other slaves, a man without a place in the world. In that respect much like Poe himself, an eternal outsider. Poe befriends the slave Reynolds, who in fact, unbeknownst to Poe, is Allan's bastard son. Poe reads the lad his early stories and young Reynolds, with his twisted and tortured soul, finds great relief in them.
Poe teaches Reynolds to read. They run away together, escaping the clutches of the tyrannical Allan. Reynolds idolizes Poe but very soon there comes the inevitable parting of the ways. Their friendship does not end well. Poe gets on with his life, such as it is.
Later, when Poe's grisly tales of murder and madness start appearing in national magazines, Reynolds begins his murder spree based on Poe's stories. The bloodier the story, the better.
There is an interesting theme of doppelgangerism in the novel, with Reynolds as Poe's evil twin (and in a way they are brothers, both being Allan's "sons"), his very own William Wilson, whose skin may be white as snow (the image at the end of Pym) but whose soul is blacker than black. Poe is the day, Reynolds is the night. What feverish nightmares Poe sublimates and exorcises by putting them on paper, Reynolds performs and realizes. Poe is the mind, Reynolds is the flesh. Reynolds is Poe's nightmare personified, his fears and anxieties come to life, running amok and causing destruction and wreaking havoc.
Ingenious idea.
It is eminently clear they cannot both exist. Not ultimately. Therefore Poe attempts to shoot Reynolds and bury him alive. Reynolds doesn't die. Reynolds uses subtler methods to try to kill Poe. He starts hiding bottles of whiskey among Poe's belongings. Poe cannot resist. In the end Reynolds and the bottles get him. His mind cannot protect itself against the attacks of his flesh.
Despite its many good qualities Jeg skal vise dere frykten isn't a frightfully good book. I found it curiously bland and it left me slightly confused, as if it didn't quite know if it wanted to be a literary novel, a biographical novel, a tale of horror or a plain thriller. Probably it wanted to be all of them at the same time, but not really succeeding in being any of them. Of recent novels delving in Poe's demise I much prefer Matthew Pearl's The Poe Shadow. A rather good literary novel about the latter days of Poe is John May's Poe and Fanny.
Though of course none of them solve the mystery of Reynolds. Neither did Frobenius but his take on the mystery is by far the most interesting I've come across.
On the other hand, taking into account Poe's state, it's quite likely that the name Reynolds is merely the confused rambling of an extremely delirious mind, signifying absolutely nothing.
13/01/2010
Tog på värjan och stötte henne i Hjorten
När man läser J.J. Wecksells Daniel Hjort är det svårt att inte tänka på Shakespeare. Eller kanske man borde säga Hagberg. Daniel Hjort fick sin premiär 1862 ("Första gången uppfördt å Nya Teatern i Helsingfors den 26 november 1862", som min upplaga av pjäsen - K.E. Holms Förlag, Helsingfors 1901 - har det på titelsidan), Carl August Hagbergs Shakespeare-översättningar kom ut mellan 1847 och 1851 (en rasande takt - även om själva arbete tog honom längre säger Nordisk familjebok:"Enligt hans egen utsago medtog detta arbete nära elfva år af hans kraftigaste mannaålder").
Wecksells Hjort är främst Hamlet, men även Jago (i en förrädisk replik citerar han Jago: "Jag är ej, hvad jag är"), och till en inte ringa grad bastarderna Edgar och Faulconbridge. När Hjorts älskade Sigrid tar sitt eget liv dränker hon sig naturligtvis. Det måste hon göra för att det gjorde Ofelia. Och som en sann shakespearesk hjälte dör Hjort en tragisk död i slutet.
Nordisk familjebok hävdar, intressant nog, att Daniel Hjort faktiskt var verklig och verkar ha varit något av en fascinerande lurifax. Han vistades, som pjäsen påstår, på Åbo slott 1597 när hertig Karl belägrade det, "som informator eller sekreterare hos riksmarsken Klas Fleming", och "skall därvid ha öfvertalat besättningen att uppgifva slottet." Genast efter detta studerade han i Leipzig, "vann utrikes magistergraden och äfven titeln af kejserlig 'poëta laureatus'". Undrar vad det var för något han skrev? Man antar att alla hans skrifter är borta. Senare uppförde han skumma uppdrag i Lappland och bland annat "förde ett antal Lappgossar att uppfostras i Uppsala", vilket då låter ganska illa. Uppenbarligen handlade det om något slags etnisk rensning, som dagens term lyder. Andra skumma uppdrag innebor underhandlingar med danskarna och ryssarna. Han hade en position på Viborgs slott som hertig Karl Filips sekreterare och var inblandad 1613 när "underhandlingen bedrefs om hertigens mottagande af den ryska tsarkrkonan." Det blev ju inte av. Kunde ha blivit ganska annorlunda om det hade gjort det. 1615 blev han "ihjälstucken af en knekthöfvitsman Erik Nilsson."
Artikeln slutar med orden: "H. var fal för guld, men lärd och begåfvad." Någon borde faktiskt ta en ny titt på den verklige mannen Daniel Hjort - och kanske skriva en ny pjäs eller roman om honom?
Som bekant insjuknade Wecksell i schizofreni som 24-åring, precis inför pjäsens premiär och levde ut resten av sitt liv, 45 år, på Lappviken. Så här skriver Nordisk familjebok om pjäsens premiär: "Skalden var närvarande, men utan att mera kunna fatta hvarken det bifall, som stycket väckte, eller den hyllning, som kom honom till del. Han var då redan hemfallen åt en obotlig sinnessjukdom , af hvilken han sedan dess alltjämt led."
Av Wecksells produktion lever ett antal dikter vidare, särskilt som sånger. Jag tänker då på Sibelius-sångerna Var det en dröm? och Demanten på marssnön. Andra komponister som använt hans texter är Collan, Diktonius, Järnefelt och Melartin.
Men Wecksell-kompositionen primus inter pares är naturligtvis Selim Palmgrens enda opera Daniel Hjort från 1910, ett kraftigt och (tänker man på tidpunkten för uppkomsten) häpnadsväckande fräscht och rentav modernt stycke. Vilket är lite underligt eftersom texten inte alls känns modern (men inte, an sich, föråldrad heller, det vill jag inte påstå) och librettot respekterar texten och återger den nära på stavelse för stavelse. Så kan det gå ibland: man håller sig strikt till det arkaiska och slutresultatet är tvärt det motsatta. Metafysik.
Operan spelades in av Åbo filharmoniker under Ulf Söderblom. I CD:ns textbilaga skriver C.J. Gardberg lite mera om den historiske Hjort. Han föddes antagligen i Småland, adlades 1607 och fick ett nytt namn: Hjortvipa. "Han blev dock ingalunda nedstucken på Åbo slott; det ödet drabbade honom först 1615, då en knekthövitsman under ett dryckeslag i Stockholm hos psalmdiktaren och kyrkoherden Sigfrid Aronius Forsius 'tog på värjan och stötte henne i Hjorten, så att han stalp baklänges vidöppen'."
Ett par intressanta saker. Det hela skedde i Stockholm och hemma hos Forsius. Forsius var då predikant i Riddarholmskyrkan, en viktig befattning, men fick gå efter incidenten. Forsius och Hjort var gamla bekanta, hade träffats kanske redan i Finland. Det var nämligen därifrån Forsius var, närmare bestämt från Helsingfors, vilket då hans namn vittnar om. "1601 skickades F. jämte von Birckholtz och Daniel Hjort av hertig Karl upp till Lappmark för att verkställa geometriska jämte geografiska mätningar. Dessa utfördes med mycken omsorg, och resultaten voro af stor betydelse för den geografiska kunskapen om dessa trakter", skriver Nordisk familjebok.
Hjort är alltså tjänsteman, politiker, diplomat, vetenskapsman, poet, förrädare, agent provocateur, antagligen spion, poet. En tämligen mångfacetterad varelse. Hans slut får mig att tänka på Marlowes slut, a reckoning in a small room, när spionen och poeten Marlowe fick en dolk i ögat i ett bråk på ett värdshus. Bråket var mera komplicerat än det såg ut att vara (åtminstone om man får tro på Charles Nicholl och hans utmärkta Marlowe-studie The Reckoning, och det får man ju). Detsamma, antar jag, gäller bråket mellan Hjort och knekthövitsmannen.
Hjort var inblandad i så många intriger, så många skurkstreck, så många skumma affärer, att hans slut måste ha ytterligare dimensioner, det kan inte enbart handla om ett banalt fyllebråk. Författaren i mig kräver det.
Wecksells Hjort är främst Hamlet, men även Jago (i en förrädisk replik citerar han Jago: "Jag är ej, hvad jag är"), och till en inte ringa grad bastarderna Edgar och Faulconbridge. När Hjorts älskade Sigrid tar sitt eget liv dränker hon sig naturligtvis. Det måste hon göra för att det gjorde Ofelia. Och som en sann shakespearesk hjälte dör Hjort en tragisk död i slutet.
Nordisk familjebok hävdar, intressant nog, att Daniel Hjort faktiskt var verklig och verkar ha varit något av en fascinerande lurifax. Han vistades, som pjäsen påstår, på Åbo slott 1597 när hertig Karl belägrade det, "som informator eller sekreterare hos riksmarsken Klas Fleming", och "skall därvid ha öfvertalat besättningen att uppgifva slottet." Genast efter detta studerade han i Leipzig, "vann utrikes magistergraden och äfven titeln af kejserlig 'poëta laureatus'". Undrar vad det var för något han skrev? Man antar att alla hans skrifter är borta. Senare uppförde han skumma uppdrag i Lappland och bland annat "förde ett antal Lappgossar att uppfostras i Uppsala", vilket då låter ganska illa. Uppenbarligen handlade det om något slags etnisk rensning, som dagens term lyder. Andra skumma uppdrag innebor underhandlingar med danskarna och ryssarna. Han hade en position på Viborgs slott som hertig Karl Filips sekreterare och var inblandad 1613 när "underhandlingen bedrefs om hertigens mottagande af den ryska tsarkrkonan." Det blev ju inte av. Kunde ha blivit ganska annorlunda om det hade gjort det. 1615 blev han "ihjälstucken af en knekthöfvitsman Erik Nilsson."
Artikeln slutar med orden: "H. var fal för guld, men lärd och begåfvad." Någon borde faktiskt ta en ny titt på den verklige mannen Daniel Hjort - och kanske skriva en ny pjäs eller roman om honom?
Som bekant insjuknade Wecksell i schizofreni som 24-åring, precis inför pjäsens premiär och levde ut resten av sitt liv, 45 år, på Lappviken. Så här skriver Nordisk familjebok om pjäsens premiär: "Skalden var närvarande, men utan att mera kunna fatta hvarken det bifall, som stycket väckte, eller den hyllning, som kom honom till del. Han var då redan hemfallen åt en obotlig sinnessjukdom , af hvilken han sedan dess alltjämt led."
Av Wecksells produktion lever ett antal dikter vidare, särskilt som sånger. Jag tänker då på Sibelius-sångerna Var det en dröm? och Demanten på marssnön. Andra komponister som använt hans texter är Collan, Diktonius, Järnefelt och Melartin.
Men Wecksell-kompositionen primus inter pares är naturligtvis Selim Palmgrens enda opera Daniel Hjort från 1910, ett kraftigt och (tänker man på tidpunkten för uppkomsten) häpnadsväckande fräscht och rentav modernt stycke. Vilket är lite underligt eftersom texten inte alls känns modern (men inte, an sich, föråldrad heller, det vill jag inte påstå) och librettot respekterar texten och återger den nära på stavelse för stavelse. Så kan det gå ibland: man håller sig strikt till det arkaiska och slutresultatet är tvärt det motsatta. Metafysik.
Operan spelades in av Åbo filharmoniker under Ulf Söderblom. I CD:ns textbilaga skriver C.J. Gardberg lite mera om den historiske Hjort. Han föddes antagligen i Småland, adlades 1607 och fick ett nytt namn: Hjortvipa. "Han blev dock ingalunda nedstucken på Åbo slott; det ödet drabbade honom först 1615, då en knekthövitsman under ett dryckeslag i Stockholm hos psalmdiktaren och kyrkoherden Sigfrid Aronius Forsius 'tog på värjan och stötte henne i Hjorten, så att han stalp baklänges vidöppen'."
Ett par intressanta saker. Det hela skedde i Stockholm och hemma hos Forsius. Forsius var då predikant i Riddarholmskyrkan, en viktig befattning, men fick gå efter incidenten. Forsius och Hjort var gamla bekanta, hade träffats kanske redan i Finland. Det var nämligen därifrån Forsius var, närmare bestämt från Helsingfors, vilket då hans namn vittnar om. "1601 skickades F. jämte von Birckholtz och Daniel Hjort av hertig Karl upp till Lappmark för att verkställa geometriska jämte geografiska mätningar. Dessa utfördes med mycken omsorg, och resultaten voro af stor betydelse för den geografiska kunskapen om dessa trakter", skriver Nordisk familjebok.
Hjort är alltså tjänsteman, politiker, diplomat, vetenskapsman, poet, förrädare, agent provocateur, antagligen spion, poet. En tämligen mångfacetterad varelse. Hans slut får mig att tänka på Marlowes slut, a reckoning in a small room, när spionen och poeten Marlowe fick en dolk i ögat i ett bråk på ett värdshus. Bråket var mera komplicerat än det såg ut att vara (åtminstone om man får tro på Charles Nicholl och hans utmärkta Marlowe-studie The Reckoning, och det får man ju). Detsamma, antar jag, gäller bråket mellan Hjort och knekthövitsmannen.
Hjort var inblandad i så många intriger, så många skurkstreck, så många skumma affärer, att hans slut måste ha ytterligare dimensioner, det kan inte enbart handla om ett banalt fyllebråk. Författaren i mig kräver det.
04/01/2010
Cracks in the Marble
As Holmes Jeremy Brett is one of the best. He's also one of the absolutely worst.
It begins well. The first episodes are solidly crafted, intelligently written, superbly acted by one and all. It is clear that the production team is serious and want to do justice to Doyle and Holmes (something that is far from self-evident in many nay most Holmes productions). It shows. And they're out to do the whole cycle, the entire Canon, all of Doyle's 60 Sherlock Holmes stories.
And one of the best features of the series: we get an intelligent Watson, the perfect foil for Holmes. In this series Watson is solid, steadfast and dependable. He has a strong moral sense as well as a deep understanding of how society works or ought to work. Holmes is the brain, Watson is the heart. Watson understands people while Holmes understands ideas and abstract concepts. And thus we get an interesting relationship between Holmes and Watson, an almost unique one: "a relationship in which, as Brett often stated, Holmes needed Watson more than Watson needed Holmes", to quote Brett's obituary by R. Dixon Smith in The Journal of the Arthur Conan Doyle Society. Together they form a whole, a complete human being. The one is useless without the other. But Holmes needs Watson more than we usually acknowledge.
Brett comes across as the Holmes to define the role (and maybe even the man). He looks absolutely right, he could have stepped out of a Paget illustration. He's tall, he's lean, he's hatchet-faced. He's a cold calculating machine, but yet volatile, impetuous, and still somehow an extremely well rounded character. And he's got a heart, hidden away, sometimes almost glimpsed at. It's not a particularly healthy heart, but it is a heart nevertheless.
In 1985 the problems begin for Brett, appropriately enough just as the filming of The Final Problem is through, and the great hiatus of Holmes is about to begin. Brett's wife dies and he himself goes to pieces. He may have had his fair share of mental problems in the past but now he cracks like an egg and has to be hospitalised. He's diagnosed as a manic-depressive and his ailment is not cured but treated with an abundant intake of lithium tablets.
He returns to active duty and starts filming The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Many of the episodes are brilliant: The Man with the Twisted Lip, The Priory School, Silver Blaze, The Six Napoleons. Then comes The Sign of Four, easily one of the best episodes in the entire production if not the best, a true gem. I'm ashamed to say, but only after I saw the production did I realize what a good book The Sign of Four is, only then were my eyes opened to its worth and charm. This is the way a Holmes tale really ought to be illustrated - for my money it may be the best and truest Holmes film ever made (and it is, by the way, one of the film length episodes so technically it can be called a film, I suppose). If there is a slight drawback it may be Watson's age - he may be a bit too old too woo Miss Morstan. So in the film he's more the avuncular Watson than the wooing Watson. Not entirely in keeping with the sacred text but works nevertheless within the context of the film. Having the lovely Jenny Seagrove play Miss Morstan as a young lady of intelligence, integrity and dignity lends the film gravitas and a solid emotional core. Having John Thaw - aka Inspector Morse - play the villain is a nice touch indeed, though of course Thaw's Jonathan Small isn't the villain at all, not the real villain. Thaw's Small is both likable and unlikable at the same time. Unlikable so we believe him as the ruthless avenger, likable so we sympathise with his reasons. While we don't exactly root for him, we're not dead against him either.
After The Return of Sherlock Holmes we get another film length episode. The Hound of the Baskervilles is one of the best film versions of the novel. It stays true to the novel, avoids all gimmicks and tricks, feels no need to amplify the tale or improve on it. The novel does, after all, stand on its own two feet very nicely, thank you very much, and really doesn't need improving. At all.
Brett takes his Holmes very seriously indeed. During breaks he is often seen perusing the Canon and he insists that the original dialogue be added to the scenes. He wants the episodes to be as true to Conan Doyle as possible. The producers (the later ones) don't always agree. Brett threatens to quit. The producers give in. Authentic dialogue is used. And then, after a while, conveniently, they again forget all about it.
But the strain is beginning to show. The medication is heavy and had nasty side-effects. Like retaining water. That's why Brett looks quite fat in the later episodes. It's all water his body has retained thanks to the lithium pills.
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes starts with quite decent episodes. By no way brilliant, but adequate. The Illustrious Client, The Creeping Man, The Boscombe Valley Mystery. Still, it has to be admitted, the best tales have already been shot. These are the more mediocre ones. They really don't inspire anyone, not the writers, not the directors, not the actors. Then things take a definite turn for the worse. The producer Michael Cox leaves. He's really the brains behind the whole project. It was all his idea, he was the one who envisioned a series that would be true to Doyle's stories, a series with a Watson who's like the Watson Doyle intended, a series with a Holmes who's got his dark and unpleasant side. He it was who wanted to film the entire Canon just the way it was written.
The new producers have rather different ideas. After Cox's untimely exit they do three long episodes: The Master Blackmailer, The Last Vampyre and The Eligible Bachelor. Now, ostensibly, these episodes are based on Doyle's stories - Charles Augustus Milverton, The Sussex Vampire and The Noble Bachelor - but the material has been stretched, altered and transmogrified almost beyond belief. The two latter episodes bear hardly any relation to Doyle's original stories. The annoying thing is that what has been added is deplorably trivial and crass. They never expand the original tales, merely sabotage them.
The Doyle originals aren't good enough for the new producers. They need to be improved on. They need to be boosted and worked over. Doyle just isn't up to par.
What is significant is how the standard of Brett's performance drops. Quite drastically. This is partly - mostly - due to the poor quality of the new scripts. They don't give Brett much to do and to act, his role merely seems to be to be and to emote. No wonder he starts hamming it. What choice does he have really?
Now there's no turning back.
The last episodes, The Memoirs of Sherlock Homes, are pretty rotten. The stories aren't first-rate, obviously, but when they're indifferently scripted they become absolutely ghastly. Brett doesn't act anymore, he simply exhibits himself, pulling out his worst mannerisms at the drop of a hat, chewing the carpet at every turn and killing every line with uninspired and extremely lazy over-acting. His heart is no longer in it. Also, Brett is uncomfortable with his bulk, ashamed of it, and it affects his performance. No longer does he cut a lean Sherlockian figure, he's no longer thin as a rake, taut as a whip, rather he's a bloated whale, an elephant. He tries but cannot hide it. It shows even in his face, the sad bloatedness. And his manic-depression is getting worse. Sometimes he doesn't even turn up so they have to have Charles Gray as Mycroft replace Sherlock as the detective of the piece. Not particularly convincing. Not really Canonical.
As for the scripts, the producers even consider doing un-Canonical stories, stories by others than Doyle. (At least that's what David Stuart Davies claims. He offered one, the producers almost did it, but turned it down at the very last minute, so Davies expanded his script to a novel - The Scroll of the Dead, if I'm not entirely mistaken.) Sacrilege. On the other hand, what's the difference, the last episodes bear precious little resemblance to anything Doyle wrote. Going outside for stories would not have made it any worse.
The last episode, The Cardboard Box, goes out in April 1994. In late 1995 Brett is dead. His heart gives out. Maybe the shambles that the series has become is part of the reason.
It begins well. The first episodes are solidly crafted, intelligently written, superbly acted by one and all. It is clear that the production team is serious and want to do justice to Doyle and Holmes (something that is far from self-evident in many nay most Holmes productions). It shows. And they're out to do the whole cycle, the entire Canon, all of Doyle's 60 Sherlock Holmes stories.
And one of the best features of the series: we get an intelligent Watson, the perfect foil for Holmes. In this series Watson is solid, steadfast and dependable. He has a strong moral sense as well as a deep understanding of how society works or ought to work. Holmes is the brain, Watson is the heart. Watson understands people while Holmes understands ideas and abstract concepts. And thus we get an interesting relationship between Holmes and Watson, an almost unique one: "a relationship in which, as Brett often stated, Holmes needed Watson more than Watson needed Holmes", to quote Brett's obituary by R. Dixon Smith in The Journal of the Arthur Conan Doyle Society. Together they form a whole, a complete human being. The one is useless without the other. But Holmes needs Watson more than we usually acknowledge.
Brett comes across as the Holmes to define the role (and maybe even the man). He looks absolutely right, he could have stepped out of a Paget illustration. He's tall, he's lean, he's hatchet-faced. He's a cold calculating machine, but yet volatile, impetuous, and still somehow an extremely well rounded character. And he's got a heart, hidden away, sometimes almost glimpsed at. It's not a particularly healthy heart, but it is a heart nevertheless.
In 1985 the problems begin for Brett, appropriately enough just as the filming of The Final Problem is through, and the great hiatus of Holmes is about to begin. Brett's wife dies and he himself goes to pieces. He may have had his fair share of mental problems in the past but now he cracks like an egg and has to be hospitalised. He's diagnosed as a manic-depressive and his ailment is not cured but treated with an abundant intake of lithium tablets.
He returns to active duty and starts filming The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Many of the episodes are brilliant: The Man with the Twisted Lip, The Priory School, Silver Blaze, The Six Napoleons. Then comes The Sign of Four, easily one of the best episodes in the entire production if not the best, a true gem. I'm ashamed to say, but only after I saw the production did I realize what a good book The Sign of Four is, only then were my eyes opened to its worth and charm. This is the way a Holmes tale really ought to be illustrated - for my money it may be the best and truest Holmes film ever made (and it is, by the way, one of the film length episodes so technically it can be called a film, I suppose). If there is a slight drawback it may be Watson's age - he may be a bit too old too woo Miss Morstan. So in the film he's more the avuncular Watson than the wooing Watson. Not entirely in keeping with the sacred text but works nevertheless within the context of the film. Having the lovely Jenny Seagrove play Miss Morstan as a young lady of intelligence, integrity and dignity lends the film gravitas and a solid emotional core. Having John Thaw - aka Inspector Morse - play the villain is a nice touch indeed, though of course Thaw's Jonathan Small isn't the villain at all, not the real villain. Thaw's Small is both likable and unlikable at the same time. Unlikable so we believe him as the ruthless avenger, likable so we sympathise with his reasons. While we don't exactly root for him, we're not dead against him either.
After The Return of Sherlock Holmes we get another film length episode. The Hound of the Baskervilles is one of the best film versions of the novel. It stays true to the novel, avoids all gimmicks and tricks, feels no need to amplify the tale or improve on it. The novel does, after all, stand on its own two feet very nicely, thank you very much, and really doesn't need improving. At all.
Brett takes his Holmes very seriously indeed. During breaks he is often seen perusing the Canon and he insists that the original dialogue be added to the scenes. He wants the episodes to be as true to Conan Doyle as possible. The producers (the later ones) don't always agree. Brett threatens to quit. The producers give in. Authentic dialogue is used. And then, after a while, conveniently, they again forget all about it.
But the strain is beginning to show. The medication is heavy and had nasty side-effects. Like retaining water. That's why Brett looks quite fat in the later episodes. It's all water his body has retained thanks to the lithium pills.
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes starts with quite decent episodes. By no way brilliant, but adequate. The Illustrious Client, The Creeping Man, The Boscombe Valley Mystery. Still, it has to be admitted, the best tales have already been shot. These are the more mediocre ones. They really don't inspire anyone, not the writers, not the directors, not the actors. Then things take a definite turn for the worse. The producer Michael Cox leaves. He's really the brains behind the whole project. It was all his idea, he was the one who envisioned a series that would be true to Doyle's stories, a series with a Watson who's like the Watson Doyle intended, a series with a Holmes who's got his dark and unpleasant side. He it was who wanted to film the entire Canon just the way it was written.
The new producers have rather different ideas. After Cox's untimely exit they do three long episodes: The Master Blackmailer, The Last Vampyre and The Eligible Bachelor. Now, ostensibly, these episodes are based on Doyle's stories - Charles Augustus Milverton, The Sussex Vampire and The Noble Bachelor - but the material has been stretched, altered and transmogrified almost beyond belief. The two latter episodes bear hardly any relation to Doyle's original stories. The annoying thing is that what has been added is deplorably trivial and crass. They never expand the original tales, merely sabotage them.
The Doyle originals aren't good enough for the new producers. They need to be improved on. They need to be boosted and worked over. Doyle just isn't up to par.
What is significant is how the standard of Brett's performance drops. Quite drastically. This is partly - mostly - due to the poor quality of the new scripts. They don't give Brett much to do and to act, his role merely seems to be to be and to emote. No wonder he starts hamming it. What choice does he have really?
Now there's no turning back.
The last episodes, The Memoirs of Sherlock Homes, are pretty rotten. The stories aren't first-rate, obviously, but when they're indifferently scripted they become absolutely ghastly. Brett doesn't act anymore, he simply exhibits himself, pulling out his worst mannerisms at the drop of a hat, chewing the carpet at every turn and killing every line with uninspired and extremely lazy over-acting. His heart is no longer in it. Also, Brett is uncomfortable with his bulk, ashamed of it, and it affects his performance. No longer does he cut a lean Sherlockian figure, he's no longer thin as a rake, taut as a whip, rather he's a bloated whale, an elephant. He tries but cannot hide it. It shows even in his face, the sad bloatedness. And his manic-depression is getting worse. Sometimes he doesn't even turn up so they have to have Charles Gray as Mycroft replace Sherlock as the detective of the piece. Not particularly convincing. Not really Canonical.
As for the scripts, the producers even consider doing un-Canonical stories, stories by others than Doyle. (At least that's what David Stuart Davies claims. He offered one, the producers almost did it, but turned it down at the very last minute, so Davies expanded his script to a novel - The Scroll of the Dead, if I'm not entirely mistaken.) Sacrilege. On the other hand, what's the difference, the last episodes bear precious little resemblance to anything Doyle wrote. Going outside for stories would not have made it any worse.
The last episode, The Cardboard Box, goes out in April 1994. In late 1995 Brett is dead. His heart gives out. Maybe the shambles that the series has become is part of the reason.
03/01/2010
Words, words, words
Writing scripts can be a bother. It can be immensely frustrating. And I don't mean just the process of writing, which in itself may be a struggle, but what comes after that, what happens when the blasted piece is finished and turned over to others. I mean the production of the script.
The actors can be all wrong. Oh dear how wrong they can be. Or they can be right but they just don't get it. Or they can have their own ideas about how the lines ought to be interpreted. (Or indeed be unable to do the lines in a certain way.) Very often this brings new layers of meaning to the piece, sometimes it just kills it.
Very often, however, whole sequences of dialogue are written in such a manner that they may be spoken only one way. Speaking them in another way, interpreting them, quite literally destroys them, takes away the meaning, renders them without any sense whatsoever, just an incoherent jumble of arbitrary lines. And that makes the author look bad, through no fault of his own.
Then there's the director. They too have their own ideas. They read the script and are inspired by it. They too have their own ideas, their own vision of how things should be. Sometimes that's supported by what is actually in the script, sometimes it brings a wealth of riches to the structuring and the dynamic and the texture of the piece, at other times not so much.
But whatever happens - however the script is produced, whether magnificently and intelligently and with a great deal of tact and delicacy, or shabbily and not really giving a toss about what the script is about - one as the author does tend to have the same primary reaction to every production: why can't they just say the lines the way they're written on the page? Why can't they just speak them with a loud and clear voice (unless indicated otherwise) and as if they understood what they're saying? Surely that cannot be too much to ask?
But of course it is. Demanding that actors speak the lines exactly as they're written is foolishness. They lines aren't written in a certain way just because the author believes so. They have no inherent meaning as such. It isn't a question of their being open to interpretation. Everybody reads, understands and interprets them in a different way, quite automatically. The author's intended way is one of them and only one. Is it more correct than the others? Well that may be, at least if you consult the author, but it has no practical bearing on the case.
Unless of course the author directs the blasted thing himself.
Occasionally that seems like a very good idea indeed.
A few years ago in Berlin I heard a radio drama I rather admired. I cornered the Austrian author and complimented him on what I thought was a very interesting and effective production. The author, incidentally, had also directed the piece. I asked him about that, since authors directing their own material interests me (and also frightens me a great deal). It turned out he'd done the whole thing in a highly peculiar manner. The actors of the piece never met each other, he'd taped them all separately! Wasn't that a problem? I asked. By no means, he replied, I knew exactly how each line was to be said, how each line should sound, so I taped every line separately and did re-takes until it sounded like it should. Then he just put all the lines in their place and the drama was finished. Didn't even take too long.
I understood the author completely. To me it made all the sense in the world. He'd done it like music. When each line sounded a certain way the whole of it made sense. Only then. Each line had to have a certain inflection, a certain cadence, a certain nuance. Only then did it sound like it sounded in his head. (Otherwise it never sounds like it sounds in the author's head when he writes the script - never once. Not even close.) True directors will of course pale at the very thought of this, probably even faint, but I find it quite fascinating. When the radio play is understood as music, when every line ought to sound just so, it may be the only way. Would be jolly nice to have a go sometime.
One author who recently had a go at directing is Neil Gaiman. He too has had his problems with productions. In Neverwhere, for instance, he was greatly surprised to find that the director's (or possibly the producer's) interpretation of The Great Beast of London, that terrifying, absolutely horrific nether-worldly creature, was a rubber cow of some sort. Not quite what he meant, actually.
Ah, but to have the actors speak the lines exactly the way one wants them spoken. What absolute bliss! In his directorial debut, the short film Statuesqe, Gaiman didn't do quite that. In fact he went the other way altogether. He didn't use words, there wasn't a single line in the entire film. Not one word was uttered by anybody.
Which to me sounds like a stroke of genius. How liberating it must have been not to have to bother with words, just do away with them, just show everything and not tell about it.
If there's one thing in writing that often gets on one's nerves it's the words, the absolute and inescapable tyranny of words. How envious one is of actors and musicians and painters and film-makers who don't need words, who can just go out and do things. Concrete things, physical things. And be understood by most anybody, not just those who by some quirky chance are able to understand the remote and obscure northern language one happens to operate in.
On the other hand again, the writer is the only free man. His work depends on nobody else. He and he alone is his own man. (Or woman, as the case may be.) The work of a great many others depends on him (or on somebody else, anyway). So maybe it isn't such a bad deal after all.
The actors can be all wrong. Oh dear how wrong they can be. Or they can be right but they just don't get it. Or they can have their own ideas about how the lines ought to be interpreted. (Or indeed be unable to do the lines in a certain way.) Very often this brings new layers of meaning to the piece, sometimes it just kills it.
Very often, however, whole sequences of dialogue are written in such a manner that they may be spoken only one way. Speaking them in another way, interpreting them, quite literally destroys them, takes away the meaning, renders them without any sense whatsoever, just an incoherent jumble of arbitrary lines. And that makes the author look bad, through no fault of his own.
Then there's the director. They too have their own ideas. They read the script and are inspired by it. They too have their own ideas, their own vision of how things should be. Sometimes that's supported by what is actually in the script, sometimes it brings a wealth of riches to the structuring and the dynamic and the texture of the piece, at other times not so much.
But whatever happens - however the script is produced, whether magnificently and intelligently and with a great deal of tact and delicacy, or shabbily and not really giving a toss about what the script is about - one as the author does tend to have the same primary reaction to every production: why can't they just say the lines the way they're written on the page? Why can't they just speak them with a loud and clear voice (unless indicated otherwise) and as if they understood what they're saying? Surely that cannot be too much to ask?
But of course it is. Demanding that actors speak the lines exactly as they're written is foolishness. They lines aren't written in a certain way just because the author believes so. They have no inherent meaning as such. It isn't a question of their being open to interpretation. Everybody reads, understands and interprets them in a different way, quite automatically. The author's intended way is one of them and only one. Is it more correct than the others? Well that may be, at least if you consult the author, but it has no practical bearing on the case.
Unless of course the author directs the blasted thing himself.
Occasionally that seems like a very good idea indeed.
A few years ago in Berlin I heard a radio drama I rather admired. I cornered the Austrian author and complimented him on what I thought was a very interesting and effective production. The author, incidentally, had also directed the piece. I asked him about that, since authors directing their own material interests me (and also frightens me a great deal). It turned out he'd done the whole thing in a highly peculiar manner. The actors of the piece never met each other, he'd taped them all separately! Wasn't that a problem? I asked. By no means, he replied, I knew exactly how each line was to be said, how each line should sound, so I taped every line separately and did re-takes until it sounded like it should. Then he just put all the lines in their place and the drama was finished. Didn't even take too long.
I understood the author completely. To me it made all the sense in the world. He'd done it like music. When each line sounded a certain way the whole of it made sense. Only then. Each line had to have a certain inflection, a certain cadence, a certain nuance. Only then did it sound like it sounded in his head. (Otherwise it never sounds like it sounds in the author's head when he writes the script - never once. Not even close.) True directors will of course pale at the very thought of this, probably even faint, but I find it quite fascinating. When the radio play is understood as music, when every line ought to sound just so, it may be the only way. Would be jolly nice to have a go sometime.
One author who recently had a go at directing is Neil Gaiman. He too has had his problems with productions. In Neverwhere, for instance, he was greatly surprised to find that the director's (or possibly the producer's) interpretation of The Great Beast of London, that terrifying, absolutely horrific nether-worldly creature, was a rubber cow of some sort. Not quite what he meant, actually.
Ah, but to have the actors speak the lines exactly the way one wants them spoken. What absolute bliss! In his directorial debut, the short film Statuesqe, Gaiman didn't do quite that. In fact he went the other way altogether. He didn't use words, there wasn't a single line in the entire film. Not one word was uttered by anybody.
Which to me sounds like a stroke of genius. How liberating it must have been not to have to bother with words, just do away with them, just show everything and not tell about it.
If there's one thing in writing that often gets on one's nerves it's the words, the absolute and inescapable tyranny of words. How envious one is of actors and musicians and painters and film-makers who don't need words, who can just go out and do things. Concrete things, physical things. And be understood by most anybody, not just those who by some quirky chance are able to understand the remote and obscure northern language one happens to operate in.
On the other hand again, the writer is the only free man. His work depends on nobody else. He and he alone is his own man. (Or woman, as the case may be.) The work of a great many others depends on him (or on somebody else, anyway). So maybe it isn't such a bad deal after all.
27/12/2009
Du musst Caligari werden
Everything is crooked and claustrophobic in Robert Wiene's Das Kabinett des Dr. Caligari, everything is warped and twisted and at an impossible, indecent angle. The proportions are all off: everything is either cramped and hideously uncomfortable or too terrifyingly huge. People walk like inanimate dolls, like crabs, or scurry like insects. The doors, it is clear to see, are far too high, much too narrow, open reluctantly like they have a will of their own. They never were designed to be used for entrances or exits. Well not by human beings anyway. The mountain in the background is like a naïve or demented version of Bruegel done on psychedelic drugs. The town clerk sits high on a peg or a perch, like a bird of prey, and has to bend deep deep down to reach his desk. The entire movie unfolds like a particularly heavy and disturbing nightmare. Like something Lovecraft might have dreamed after a very nasty meal. What is really crooked, and manifested in every tiny detail, is the soul.
Very unpleasant.
Wholly delightful.
The entire story is told in flashback by the protagonist Francis. It all begins when a mysterious Dr. Caligari comes to town. The arrival coincides with a series of brutal murders. Caligari is a shady, sinister looking character, in manner and appearance something like a cross between a severely demented black bug and a secretive penguin with a nasty attitude, who carries with him in a coffin or box a somnambulist called Cesare. Cesare has been asleep all his life but Caligari has the power to awaken him. This he does at the fair, for money. Cesare has got a rare gift: he can foretell the future. However, anybody asking when he will die gets a terrifying answer: You will die before the dawn.
At the fair Francis's friend asks Cesare the ominous question and receives the inevitable answer. He is slaughtered during the night, stabbed most viciously, becoming the second victim in the murder series. It can be no mere coincidence. Francis puts two and two together and goes to the police. Then another man is arrested for the murders - he's caught red-handed trying to stab a woman. He pleads his innocence.
Francis is less than convinced of the man's guilt. He decides to stake out Caligari's house. Through the window he sees Caligari sitting by the somnolent Cesare. Cut to Jane, Francis's beloved, sleeping in her maidenly bed. Jane has caught Caligari's eye earlier in the day when she sought her father and Francis at the fair. Is she to be the crazed killer's third victim?
Something lurks in the shadows, creeps silently nearer. It's Cesare. He breaks into her chambers, knife in hand. He approaches her bed, his bulging eyes reflecting madness and bottomless horror. He raises his knife, ready to plunge it in her heart, ready to rip her to shreds like the previous victims, then he stops. He cannot do it. His face softens, he reaches for her hair, caresses her forehead. She wakes up and screams her lungs out. He grabs her, lifts her up and carries her away.
Jane's screams rouse the household. Cesare makes his getaway through the cubistic rooftops, lugging the unconscious Jane to Caligari's lair. The men-folk pursue him. Exhausted he falls on his knees and is forced to abandon Jane. He manages to give the angry mob the slip only to collapse, all his energy spent, in the marsh-like wilderness.
Back home Jane regains her consciousness. She shouts out the name of the culprit: "Cesare!" Francis explains that this is impossible. He's been watching Caligari all night and Cesare has been sleeping in his coffin. Francis and a couple of constables pay Caligari a visit anyway. They find that Cesare isn't sleeping in his coffin: it's an effigy, a lifesize doll. Caligari makes a run for it, Francis is hot on his trail. Caligari slips through a gate. It's an insane asylum. Francis enters and demands to know whether they have an inmate called Caligari. They do not. But perhaps the director knows, he returned earlier today. Frances is shown to the director's office. Francis enters the office, the director looks up - it's Dr. Caligari!
In blind panic he rushes out and explains the situation to the incredulous staff. While the director is away Francis and members of the staff enter his office. There they find incriminating evidence. The director is a specialist on somnambulism. In one book they find the description of another murder series; in the 18th century there was another Dr. Caligari and a similar series of murders. Similar? More like identical. In the director's journal they learn that it has long been his ambition to recreate the murders - and when a suitable somnambulist was admitted into the asylum the director saw his chance and grabbed it. Oh the joy, oh the ecstasy! Now, finally, he can realise his dream! Now at last he can unravel the psychiatric secrets of the original Caligari! Can a somnambulist be forced to commit murders against his will?
In order to penetrate Caligari's secrets he needs must become Caligari!
Francis and the Staff are aghast. Caligari is confronted and seized - his madness now impossible to conceal any longer. He's put in a strait-jacket and locked away.
Cut back the first scene with Francis telling his tale. He is revealed to be an inmate at the asylum. When the director of the asylum - obviously Dr. Caligari - shows himself, Frances bursts out: "You all think that I'm insane! It isn't true - it's the director who's insane!" He assaults the director and has to be forcibly restrained. He's placed in a strait-jacket and locked away - in the same cell Caligari in which was locked in his story.
The movie ends with a disturbing close-up of Caligari, who's just realised what is wrong with Francis and how to cure him.
The impact of the movie is surprisingly deep and complex. What ought to be phony and childish becomes somehow, quite mysteriously, terrifying. The acting is hammy; it only increases the effect. The settings are cardboard and at best clumsy - that only makes the nightmare more hallucinogenic. I can't explain it. I can only watch, mesmerised.
The way one watches a nightmare.
The ending (which supposedly was thought up by Fritz Lang; it wasn't in the original script) has been admonished a great deal. I find it only enhances the impact - it's one extra layer of madness in a totally mad universe. Nothing can be trusted. Nobody is sane. Especially not those who think they are. The strait-jacket is never far away.
In 1933 the movie was banned in Germany as "entartete Kunst", degenerate art. Which seems quite logical. Talking about lunacy.
Very unpleasant.
Wholly delightful.
The entire story is told in flashback by the protagonist Francis. It all begins when a mysterious Dr. Caligari comes to town. The arrival coincides with a series of brutal murders. Caligari is a shady, sinister looking character, in manner and appearance something like a cross between a severely demented black bug and a secretive penguin with a nasty attitude, who carries with him in a coffin or box a somnambulist called Cesare. Cesare has been asleep all his life but Caligari has the power to awaken him. This he does at the fair, for money. Cesare has got a rare gift: he can foretell the future. However, anybody asking when he will die gets a terrifying answer: You will die before the dawn.
At the fair Francis's friend asks Cesare the ominous question and receives the inevitable answer. He is slaughtered during the night, stabbed most viciously, becoming the second victim in the murder series. It can be no mere coincidence. Francis puts two and two together and goes to the police. Then another man is arrested for the murders - he's caught red-handed trying to stab a woman. He pleads his innocence.
Francis is less than convinced of the man's guilt. He decides to stake out Caligari's house. Through the window he sees Caligari sitting by the somnolent Cesare. Cut to Jane, Francis's beloved, sleeping in her maidenly bed. Jane has caught Caligari's eye earlier in the day when she sought her father and Francis at the fair. Is she to be the crazed killer's third victim?
Something lurks in the shadows, creeps silently nearer. It's Cesare. He breaks into her chambers, knife in hand. He approaches her bed, his bulging eyes reflecting madness and bottomless horror. He raises his knife, ready to plunge it in her heart, ready to rip her to shreds like the previous victims, then he stops. He cannot do it. His face softens, he reaches for her hair, caresses her forehead. She wakes up and screams her lungs out. He grabs her, lifts her up and carries her away.
Jane's screams rouse the household. Cesare makes his getaway through the cubistic rooftops, lugging the unconscious Jane to Caligari's lair. The men-folk pursue him. Exhausted he falls on his knees and is forced to abandon Jane. He manages to give the angry mob the slip only to collapse, all his energy spent, in the marsh-like wilderness.
Back home Jane regains her consciousness. She shouts out the name of the culprit: "Cesare!" Francis explains that this is impossible. He's been watching Caligari all night and Cesare has been sleeping in his coffin. Francis and a couple of constables pay Caligari a visit anyway. They find that Cesare isn't sleeping in his coffin: it's an effigy, a lifesize doll. Caligari makes a run for it, Francis is hot on his trail. Caligari slips through a gate. It's an insane asylum. Francis enters and demands to know whether they have an inmate called Caligari. They do not. But perhaps the director knows, he returned earlier today. Frances is shown to the director's office. Francis enters the office, the director looks up - it's Dr. Caligari!
In blind panic he rushes out and explains the situation to the incredulous staff. While the director is away Francis and members of the staff enter his office. There they find incriminating evidence. The director is a specialist on somnambulism. In one book they find the description of another murder series; in the 18th century there was another Dr. Caligari and a similar series of murders. Similar? More like identical. In the director's journal they learn that it has long been his ambition to recreate the murders - and when a suitable somnambulist was admitted into the asylum the director saw his chance and grabbed it. Oh the joy, oh the ecstasy! Now, finally, he can realise his dream! Now at last he can unravel the psychiatric secrets of the original Caligari! Can a somnambulist be forced to commit murders against his will?
In order to penetrate Caligari's secrets he needs must become Caligari!
Francis and the Staff are aghast. Caligari is confronted and seized - his madness now impossible to conceal any longer. He's put in a strait-jacket and locked away.
Cut back the first scene with Francis telling his tale. He is revealed to be an inmate at the asylum. When the director of the asylum - obviously Dr. Caligari - shows himself, Frances bursts out: "You all think that I'm insane! It isn't true - it's the director who's insane!" He assaults the director and has to be forcibly restrained. He's placed in a strait-jacket and locked away - in the same cell Caligari in which was locked in his story.
The movie ends with a disturbing close-up of Caligari, who's just realised what is wrong with Francis and how to cure him.
The impact of the movie is surprisingly deep and complex. What ought to be phony and childish becomes somehow, quite mysteriously, terrifying. The acting is hammy; it only increases the effect. The settings are cardboard and at best clumsy - that only makes the nightmare more hallucinogenic. I can't explain it. I can only watch, mesmerised.
The way one watches a nightmare.
The ending (which supposedly was thought up by Fritz Lang; it wasn't in the original script) has been admonished a great deal. I find it only enhances the impact - it's one extra layer of madness in a totally mad universe. Nothing can be trusted. Nobody is sane. Especially not those who think they are. The strait-jacket is never far away.
In 1933 the movie was banned in Germany as "entartete Kunst", degenerate art. Which seems quite logical. Talking about lunacy.
22/12/2009
SF 100
I rather like lists. I may not always agree with then - in fact I seldom do, come to think of it - but that's not important. That may make them even more interesting.
100 Must-Read Science Fiction Novels, edited by Stephen E. Andrews and Nick Rennison, with a foreword by Christopher Priest, is a splendid book, especially on a short tube or tram trip (or indeed on the bog). It lists, you probably guessed it, one hundred science fiction novels that everybody ought to read. I've read forty of them. In case you're wondering. Will probably end up reading quite a few more, as several of the unread ones really do seem quite interesting.
The choices are, for the most part, fairly obvious. There are a few exhilaratingly quirky books thrown in. It begins alphabetically with Brian Aldiss (Hothouse) and ends with Roger Zelazny (This Immortal). The earliest novel is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818/1831) and the only other 19th century novels are Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth and a trio of Wells's - The Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Moreau and The War of the Worlds. Apart from Conan Doyle's Lost World and Edgar Rice Burroughs's A Princess of Mars - which by the way came out the same year: 1912 - it's all pretty modern stuff. The most recent is Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon (2002), with close runners-up J. G. Ballard (Super-Cannes, 2000) and Stephen Baxter (Moonseed, 1998).
The POV is excessively Anglo-American, frighteningly so. Only three novels published in another language are deemed worthy to grace the pages of the book. They are the aforementioned Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth (written in French), Stanislaw Lem's Solaris (written in Polish) and the Strugatsky brothers' Roadside Picnic (written in Russian). There are about three times as many American novels as UK ones. And, oh, one Australian one: Greg Egan's Permutation City (1994). Probably only a slip-up.
So this we learn, well and proper: valid Science Fiction is written in English (most preferably American English) and written sometime around or after 1950. Good to know.
The violent American slant amazes all the more as the book is a British one, A Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide, in fact. Though what the old Bloomsbury lot, Virginia Woolf and company, would have made of good old honest science fiction I have no idea. Actually I do. They'd have loathed it. Well, they couldn't even stand James Joyce, he was far too horrid and grubby and plebeian for them.
A few authors are in with two books: Philip K. Dick (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Ubik), Isaac Asimov (I, Robot and The Foundation), J.G. Ballard (The Drowned World and Super-Cannes), Alfred Bester (The Demolished Man and Stars My Destination), Ursula K. LeGuin (The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed), Robert Heinlein (Orphans of the Sky and Starship Troopers) and Ray Bradbury (The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451). And Wells, of course, is in with three. Ballard is clearly over-represented, and so is Heinlein. Frightfully so. And probably Asimov as well. I doubt their work will retain its value over the years. They won't be forgotten, they're too good for that, but most of their stuff will be. And justly so.
A lot of authors clearly belong on the list, but haven't quite got that seminal piece of work. Robert Silverberg's book is The Man in the Maze. Could have been any of a dozen others. He does keep his standard even and extremely high, but the stellar performances may be missing. Arthur C. Clarke's book is Childhood's End. Not a bad choice, not at all. Philip José Farmer's is The Lovers, which is actually a wise and inspired choice. The Lovers is actually a seminal work, now that I reflect upon it a moment.
Michael Bishop's Ancient of Days is a superb choice and quite surprising. It's one of those books that you can't categorize, a book that transcends the narrow constraints of genre, a book that is good science fiction, delightful fantasy and a full-bodied and thought provoking mainstream read - at the same time. And so is Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange. An obvious choice, painfully so, but a necessary one. He's written a few other science fiction novels but nothing as lasting as this one.
D.G. Compton's The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe is one of the books I haven't read but certainly shall. I've seen the movie though and it had a great impact on me. This is one of those instances where the author has nailed the future with amazing accuracy. Much to our distress. Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is one of the self-evident ones. It had to be chosen. Barry N. Malzberg's Guernica Night is another one I've managed to miss. He's a bit elusive, one doesn't come across his stuff very often. But it's always worth reading. And it always tends to be funny, dark, more than mildly deranged and mind-bogglingly amusing.
I have my doubts about Samuel R. Delany. To me he seems wildly overrated. Especially books like Nova. So that's a choice I'm not entirely happy with. Larry Niven's Ringworld, however, I do agree with wholeheartedly. Jack Vance's The Languages of Pao I've tried to get my hands on for years. I'm still trying. John Sladek's Tik-Tok was quite far-out and cutting edge for it's time but has it lasted? I certainly hope so. Connie Willis's Doomsday Book seems a little light-weight in this company. I did enjoy it, immensely. But more as an easy-reading entertainment than as a serious science fiction novel. And of course there's Orwell's 1984. Another self-evident choice and an imperative one. I can't argue with Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-five either.
Disch (The Genocides), Budrys (Rogue Moon), Spinrad (The Iron Dream), Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash), Miller (A Canticle for Leibowitz), Keyes (Flowers for Algernon) are splendid choices. In many cases I approve of the author but not the selection. Can't be helped, I suppose.
Re-reading Priest's foreword I notice that he shares my concerns in most cases. I don't know if that's good or bad. But I guess it boils down to this: a question of what one sees Science Fiction as. Is it an entertaining vehicle for space adventure and suchlike - or a serious, and I might add powerful, tool for intellectual curiosity. Is it an end in itself or a means for posing important and interesting questions? The latter, I think. But also, in a lesser and blatantly self-indulgent degree, the former. One certainly does tend to like Science Fiction just simply because it is Science Fiction.
To my dismay I find that I've read hardly any of the novels written in the '90s. Naughty me. Will have to look into it. All of them can't be rotten.
But. There's a lot missing. Where's Stapledon? Where's Douglas Adams? Where's Stanley G. Weinbaum? Where's Richard Cowper? Where's Poe? Insanity!
Another thing. The meat of the genre is more often than not in the short story. That's the best vehicle for the idea hence the entire genre. The novels, well they're mostly padded out just for profit. That's what readers want. So they get fix-ups and one-trick ponies and a lot of useless pages. A lot of science fiction novels really don't need to be novels, don't want to be novels. But still, some of them really are worth the reading, all the same, abundantly worth it. In fact, many of them.
So the problem remains. There are too many books. And, alas and alack, too many good books. Can't possibly read them all.
Oh, the misery of it all.
And, of course, reading rubbish also has its definite charms.
So I guess we're buggered both coming and going.
But if one can't read all the books one ought to read, one can at least read about them. It's something, anyway.
100 Must-Read Science Fiction Novels, edited by Stephen E. Andrews and Nick Rennison, with a foreword by Christopher Priest, is a splendid book, especially on a short tube or tram trip (or indeed on the bog). It lists, you probably guessed it, one hundred science fiction novels that everybody ought to read. I've read forty of them. In case you're wondering. Will probably end up reading quite a few more, as several of the unread ones really do seem quite interesting.
The choices are, for the most part, fairly obvious. There are a few exhilaratingly quirky books thrown in. It begins alphabetically with Brian Aldiss (Hothouse) and ends with Roger Zelazny (This Immortal). The earliest novel is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818/1831) and the only other 19th century novels are Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth and a trio of Wells's - The Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Moreau and The War of the Worlds. Apart from Conan Doyle's Lost World and Edgar Rice Burroughs's A Princess of Mars - which by the way came out the same year: 1912 - it's all pretty modern stuff. The most recent is Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon (2002), with close runners-up J. G. Ballard (Super-Cannes, 2000) and Stephen Baxter (Moonseed, 1998).
The POV is excessively Anglo-American, frighteningly so. Only three novels published in another language are deemed worthy to grace the pages of the book. They are the aforementioned Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth (written in French), Stanislaw Lem's Solaris (written in Polish) and the Strugatsky brothers' Roadside Picnic (written in Russian). There are about three times as many American novels as UK ones. And, oh, one Australian one: Greg Egan's Permutation City (1994). Probably only a slip-up.
So this we learn, well and proper: valid Science Fiction is written in English (most preferably American English) and written sometime around or after 1950. Good to know.
The violent American slant amazes all the more as the book is a British one, A Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide, in fact. Though what the old Bloomsbury lot, Virginia Woolf and company, would have made of good old honest science fiction I have no idea. Actually I do. They'd have loathed it. Well, they couldn't even stand James Joyce, he was far too horrid and grubby and plebeian for them.
A few authors are in with two books: Philip K. Dick (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Ubik), Isaac Asimov (I, Robot and The Foundation), J.G. Ballard (The Drowned World and Super-Cannes), Alfred Bester (The Demolished Man and Stars My Destination), Ursula K. LeGuin (The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed), Robert Heinlein (Orphans of the Sky and Starship Troopers) and Ray Bradbury (The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451). And Wells, of course, is in with three. Ballard is clearly over-represented, and so is Heinlein. Frightfully so. And probably Asimov as well. I doubt their work will retain its value over the years. They won't be forgotten, they're too good for that, but most of their stuff will be. And justly so.
A lot of authors clearly belong on the list, but haven't quite got that seminal piece of work. Robert Silverberg's book is The Man in the Maze. Could have been any of a dozen others. He does keep his standard even and extremely high, but the stellar performances may be missing. Arthur C. Clarke's book is Childhood's End. Not a bad choice, not at all. Philip José Farmer's is The Lovers, which is actually a wise and inspired choice. The Lovers is actually a seminal work, now that I reflect upon it a moment.
Michael Bishop's Ancient of Days is a superb choice and quite surprising. It's one of those books that you can't categorize, a book that transcends the narrow constraints of genre, a book that is good science fiction, delightful fantasy and a full-bodied and thought provoking mainstream read - at the same time. And so is Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange. An obvious choice, painfully so, but a necessary one. He's written a few other science fiction novels but nothing as lasting as this one.
D.G. Compton's The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe is one of the books I haven't read but certainly shall. I've seen the movie though and it had a great impact on me. This is one of those instances where the author has nailed the future with amazing accuracy. Much to our distress. Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is one of the self-evident ones. It had to be chosen. Barry N. Malzberg's Guernica Night is another one I've managed to miss. He's a bit elusive, one doesn't come across his stuff very often. But it's always worth reading. And it always tends to be funny, dark, more than mildly deranged and mind-bogglingly amusing.
I have my doubts about Samuel R. Delany. To me he seems wildly overrated. Especially books like Nova. So that's a choice I'm not entirely happy with. Larry Niven's Ringworld, however, I do agree with wholeheartedly. Jack Vance's The Languages of Pao I've tried to get my hands on for years. I'm still trying. John Sladek's Tik-Tok was quite far-out and cutting edge for it's time but has it lasted? I certainly hope so. Connie Willis's Doomsday Book seems a little light-weight in this company. I did enjoy it, immensely. But more as an easy-reading entertainment than as a serious science fiction novel. And of course there's Orwell's 1984. Another self-evident choice and an imperative one. I can't argue with Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-five either.
Disch (The Genocides), Budrys (Rogue Moon), Spinrad (The Iron Dream), Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash), Miller (A Canticle for Leibowitz), Keyes (Flowers for Algernon) are splendid choices. In many cases I approve of the author but not the selection. Can't be helped, I suppose.
Re-reading Priest's foreword I notice that he shares my concerns in most cases. I don't know if that's good or bad. But I guess it boils down to this: a question of what one sees Science Fiction as. Is it an entertaining vehicle for space adventure and suchlike - or a serious, and I might add powerful, tool for intellectual curiosity. Is it an end in itself or a means for posing important and interesting questions? The latter, I think. But also, in a lesser and blatantly self-indulgent degree, the former. One certainly does tend to like Science Fiction just simply because it is Science Fiction.
To my dismay I find that I've read hardly any of the novels written in the '90s. Naughty me. Will have to look into it. All of them can't be rotten.
But. There's a lot missing. Where's Stapledon? Where's Douglas Adams? Where's Stanley G. Weinbaum? Where's Richard Cowper? Where's Poe? Insanity!
Another thing. The meat of the genre is more often than not in the short story. That's the best vehicle for the idea hence the entire genre. The novels, well they're mostly padded out just for profit. That's what readers want. So they get fix-ups and one-trick ponies and a lot of useless pages. A lot of science fiction novels really don't need to be novels, don't want to be novels. But still, some of them really are worth the reading, all the same, abundantly worth it. In fact, many of them.
So the problem remains. There are too many books. And, alas and alack, too many good books. Can't possibly read them all.
Oh, the misery of it all.
And, of course, reading rubbish also has its definite charms.
So I guess we're buggered both coming and going.
But if one can't read all the books one ought to read, one can at least read about them. It's something, anyway.
20/12/2009
The Bat
Is Mary Roberts Rinehart quite forgotten or does somebody still read her today? She seems to have a somewhat bad rep, did at least when I read her sometimes in the early 80's. I found her particular brand of semi-gothic thriller rather refreshing, probably because so much time had gone by and all her horrible clichés seemed, well, almost original. "Had I but known" is the key phrase in her books, the heroine always doing something remarkably stupid and getting herself and everyone else in a mighty jam just because there's this crucial bit of information that's been withheld from her or there's something she never understood to pass on.
The Bat is a 1926 movie based on Rinehart's play (written together with Avery Hopwood), and partly on her first and best novel The Circular Staircase, set in a secluded old mansion - with a particularly nasty criminal known as The Bat looming around somewhere in the neighbourhood. An elderly lady rents the mansion from its owner, the president of the Oakdale Bank. The bank has just been robbed and the president is dead. It seems like the culprit has stashed the loot somewhere in the mansion. There are, of course, several secret passageways in the house for nocturnal creepers-about and clandestine rooms for mysterious villains to reside in.
The menagerie of the house is colourful: the elderly lady, her niece, the kooky maid, the sinister Asian butler, the crooked nephew of the president, a shady doctor, a gardener who is in reality the cashier of the bank and suspected of embezzling the money, an inept private eye, a policeman with remarkably piercing eyes, a masked figure who creeps around the house in the dark as if he owned it and a creepy dazed guy who seems to have been hit over the head with something, or maybe he's just severely unbalanced and most likely dangerous. And one of them may indeed be the much feared Bat. Must be.
And The Bat certainly is around - and he's after the money stolen from the bank. And the money is hidden somewhere in the house, in a concealed room. But nobody knows where the room is located.
What follows is action somewhat akin to the better known The Cat and the Canary (which in fact is written and filmed later than The Bat - and hence probably influenced by it), suspense, laughs, horror, claustrophobia, death - and the unmasking of the villain. Who turns out to be the policeman. In fact he's an impostor, the real policeman is the dazed fellow whom The Bat has hit over the head and whose papers he's stolen.
Now The Bat is an interesting character indeed. In the very first scene of the movie he sends a gloating note to a millionaire announcing that he's going to steal the millionaire's invaluable emeralds - and there's nothing anybody can do to stop him. The millionaire alerts the police and soon his house is bursting with boys in blue. The Bat goes ahead and steals the emeralds anyway, makes an easy getaway and leaves an acerbic taunting note written on bat-shaped paper. He's dressed in a frightening bat mask with pointy ears and wears a black cape. He scales any wall with his ingenious ropes almost as if he were flying. He has got his own bat signal - he projects a bat on the wall with a lamp to scare people.
Now of whom does this remind one?
Batman, obviously.
I'd be immensely, hugely surprised if Bob Kane hadn't seen the movie and been quite influenced by it, maybe even got his hero almost directly from it. It's clear that this is the world from which Batman stems, the world of the silent movies with their pulpish plots and theatrical characters. Indeed, many of the early adventures could be straightforward silent movie scenarios. And the Joker, for instance, is simply a comic book version of Conrad Veidt's unforgettable Gwynplaine from the 1928 The Man who Laughs by Paul Leni - physically that is. It's the same leer, the same deathlike grin. Those who've read The Black Dahlia (or even seen the pretty lacklustre movie version) will remember the movie; it has got a really ghoulish nightmarish quality to it, but it's also extremely tragic and touching.
The Bat is not a particularly good movie, even in it's own genre. It's ludicrous, none of it makes much sense at all, but it's fun. Ripping fun, actually. It was even remade twice, in 1930 as The Bat Whispers and 1959 as, again, The Bat, with no less an actor than Vincent Price.
It may be worth a mention that the director Roland West, who also did the 1930 version, gained unwelcome notoriety a few years later when he was implicated in the possible murder of his girlfriend Thelma Todd. Todd was an actress, pretty famous, as it happens, as she'd appeared in several Laurel & Hardy features, two Marx movies (Monkey Business and Horse Feathers where she played the vampish College Widow) and, this pretty much clinches it for me, in the 1931 original version of Hammett's The Maltese Falcon where she played Iva Archer, the wife/widow of Spade's unlucky partner Miles Archer. She specialised in tough, hard-as-nails blondes, and never was there a more convincing tough blond than she. Never were nails quite as hard as in her case.
The Todd murder is one of the legendary Hollywood murders and it never was solved. West was a strong suspect, but so was Lucky Luciano. It's interesting, however, to notice that West never worked in Hollywood after the Todd murder. And naturally there is supposed to be a deathbed confession, which, a bit conveniently, only surfaced some thirty years after West's death.
The Bat is a 1926 movie based on Rinehart's play (written together with Avery Hopwood), and partly on her first and best novel The Circular Staircase, set in a secluded old mansion - with a particularly nasty criminal known as The Bat looming around somewhere in the neighbourhood. An elderly lady rents the mansion from its owner, the president of the Oakdale Bank. The bank has just been robbed and the president is dead. It seems like the culprit has stashed the loot somewhere in the mansion. There are, of course, several secret passageways in the house for nocturnal creepers-about and clandestine rooms for mysterious villains to reside in.
The menagerie of the house is colourful: the elderly lady, her niece, the kooky maid, the sinister Asian butler, the crooked nephew of the president, a shady doctor, a gardener who is in reality the cashier of the bank and suspected of embezzling the money, an inept private eye, a policeman with remarkably piercing eyes, a masked figure who creeps around the house in the dark as if he owned it and a creepy dazed guy who seems to have been hit over the head with something, or maybe he's just severely unbalanced and most likely dangerous. And one of them may indeed be the much feared Bat. Must be.
And The Bat certainly is around - and he's after the money stolen from the bank. And the money is hidden somewhere in the house, in a concealed room. But nobody knows where the room is located.
What follows is action somewhat akin to the better known The Cat and the Canary (which in fact is written and filmed later than The Bat - and hence probably influenced by it), suspense, laughs, horror, claustrophobia, death - and the unmasking of the villain. Who turns out to be the policeman. In fact he's an impostor, the real policeman is the dazed fellow whom The Bat has hit over the head and whose papers he's stolen.
Now The Bat is an interesting character indeed. In the very first scene of the movie he sends a gloating note to a millionaire announcing that he's going to steal the millionaire's invaluable emeralds - and there's nothing anybody can do to stop him. The millionaire alerts the police and soon his house is bursting with boys in blue. The Bat goes ahead and steals the emeralds anyway, makes an easy getaway and leaves an acerbic taunting note written on bat-shaped paper. He's dressed in a frightening bat mask with pointy ears and wears a black cape. He scales any wall with his ingenious ropes almost as if he were flying. He has got his own bat signal - he projects a bat on the wall with a lamp to scare people.
Now of whom does this remind one?
Batman, obviously.
I'd be immensely, hugely surprised if Bob Kane hadn't seen the movie and been quite influenced by it, maybe even got his hero almost directly from it. It's clear that this is the world from which Batman stems, the world of the silent movies with their pulpish plots and theatrical characters. Indeed, many of the early adventures could be straightforward silent movie scenarios. And the Joker, for instance, is simply a comic book version of Conrad Veidt's unforgettable Gwynplaine from the 1928 The Man who Laughs by Paul Leni - physically that is. It's the same leer, the same deathlike grin. Those who've read The Black Dahlia (or even seen the pretty lacklustre movie version) will remember the movie; it has got a really ghoulish nightmarish quality to it, but it's also extremely tragic and touching.
The Bat is not a particularly good movie, even in it's own genre. It's ludicrous, none of it makes much sense at all, but it's fun. Ripping fun, actually. It was even remade twice, in 1930 as The Bat Whispers and 1959 as, again, The Bat, with no less an actor than Vincent Price.
It may be worth a mention that the director Roland West, who also did the 1930 version, gained unwelcome notoriety a few years later when he was implicated in the possible murder of his girlfriend Thelma Todd. Todd was an actress, pretty famous, as it happens, as she'd appeared in several Laurel & Hardy features, two Marx movies (Monkey Business and Horse Feathers where she played the vampish College Widow) and, this pretty much clinches it for me, in the 1931 original version of Hammett's The Maltese Falcon where she played Iva Archer, the wife/widow of Spade's unlucky partner Miles Archer. She specialised in tough, hard-as-nails blondes, and never was there a more convincing tough blond than she. Never were nails quite as hard as in her case.
The Todd murder is one of the legendary Hollywood murders and it never was solved. West was a strong suspect, but so was Lucky Luciano. It's interesting, however, to notice that West never worked in Hollywood after the Todd murder. And naturally there is supposed to be a deathbed confession, which, a bit conveniently, only surfaced some thirty years after West's death.
14/12/2009
End Game
I came across Michael Dibdin surprisingly early. He'd published his first novel in 1978. I purchased it in 1982, a couple years after the Sphere paperback came out. I'd never heard of the man, obviously. I don't think much anybody had. He'd only written the one book and it was by no means a runaway bestseller. The reason I bought the book, the reason I had to buy it was simple. The book was called The Last Sherlock Holmes Story and it was a Sherlock Holmes pastiche.
This was back in the day when Nicholas Meyer had recently published his seminal pastiche The Seven-Per-Cent solution, and everything seemed possible. Meyer had taken a jaded, hackneyed, severely vulgarised character and made him exciting again. After that it was another game entirely. The old rules no longer applied. Anything could happen.
Dibdin went one further. His pastiche was cheeky, oh yes very cheeky indeed, it was clever - and above all it was dangerous. After all - the man had the nerve to make Sherlock Holmes not only face Jack the Ripper but be Jack the Ripper. How macabre! How absolutely refreshing and delightful!
The Last Sherlock Holmes Story quite simply altered my consciousness. I don't think I've ever fully recovered from the book. From that moment on Dibdin was a marked man. Anything he wrote I read.
Took eight years for him to follow up with another book. A Rich Full Death, while not as exciting as the first one, was still a wonderfully grotesque book. It had the poet Robert Browning as the protagonist (and possible murderer), it had a series of macabre murders, it had eerie atmosphere in spades and wit in buckets. It also began the Dibdin's long literary association with Italy.
The next one, Ratking, came out after two years. This time the protagonist was an Italian policeman called Aurelio Zen. It showed us the seamy underbelly of Italy, the Italy we all knew and suspected existed, but to the existence of which nobody would admit. Not as good a book as the two previous one, but still entertaining. The Tryst, the next novel, was short, cryptic, hard to define or even to grasp. It was polished, elegant, obscure. Maybe there was a crime, maybe there wasn't. By the end one didn't much care. Then another Zen, Vendetta. Hang on, he wasn't trying to turn this Zen chap into a serial character was he? He wasn't? I mean, that's where the money is, churning out the same book over and over again in slightly different form, that's what the readers and thus the book publishing industry wanted, but surely Dibdin was above such petty and grubby thinking? Wasn't he?
In 1991 it was time for Dirty Tricks. And what a brilliant novel that was! Dark, funny, ironic, and with the snotty and superior narrator ending up with egg on his face, justly so. Dibdin even had the cheek to let his protagonist meet an oddly familiar Thames Valley Inspector called Moss who liked doing crossword puzzles and listening to Wagner. Oh the dramatic irony of the book. Superb. This was a masterpiece.
Now there seemed to be a pattern. The Zens and the non-Zens seemed to alternate. And the Zens weren't that bad, really, once one got used to them. Cabal was quite amusing, Dead Lagoon and Cosi Fan Tutti positively splendid. In Dead Lagoon we were granted a wonderful view of Venice, Cosi Fan Tutti was a criminal opera buffa (after the fashion of Mozart's opera of the almost identical name) where impostors flourished and identities were mistook and life was just one delicious game. Here was Dibdin at his best, bubbly, sparkling, witty, ironic.
The non-Zen books, however, took a turn for the worse. The Dying of the Light and Thanksgiving were pretty bleak. Dark Spectre was a surprisingly un-Dibdinian thriller about an American religious cult with deplorable suicidal tendencies. Not bad, with many fine insights in fact, but nothing special. In America Dibdin seemed to be on alien turf, not really at home with the language or the ethos. Any number of American thriller writers could have churned out the book. For them it would have been a high point. Not so for Dibdin.
So the Zen books were the thing, then. In them one could find the old clever, bubbly Michael. Right?
Which is of course when it all went down in flames. A Long Finish was pretty boring. Bleak and boring. The next ones, Blood Rain and And Then You Die were positively depressing. It was like Dibdin was fed up with life in general and his own life in particular and the only way to fight it was to pour it all out on paper. It was like he had to take all that was dark and miserable in his soul and chuck it in his books to cope. Unfortunately the depression did not elevate the books. The depression just went in a corner and sagged there, too tired and weary to stand up and give a mighty roar.
Time perchance to kiss Dibdin off?
I never made a conscious decision to stop reading his books, to sever the connection, to finish our fruitful relationship that had lasted a good twenty years. He just faded away. There were other books, there always are other books. That's the curse and the blessing of it. I was half conscious of the fact that new books about Zen were being written and published. Sometimes I caught a glimpse of them in a bookstore. They didn't register particularly.
Then suddenly he died. In 2007, far too early.
Sometime after that I came across the penultimate Zen novel, Back to Bologna. And of course bought it. Reading it I was flabbergasted. This was the old Dibdin! The man was back on form, at the top of his game! The book was funny, clever, ironic, cheeky, bubbly - everything one expected and hoped for. The characters were lively, the plot suitably arabesque, the patter delightfully tongue-in-cheek. It was a marvel. One of the best Zens.
Of course I had to dig up the previous Zen, Medusa. While not as brilliant as Back to Bologna, it was still a splendid read. Things had definitely taken a turn for the better. The slump was over.
Then there was the last one, the posthumously published End Games. The positively last one. No more Dibdin'd to be had neither for love nor money. Kept putting it off for the longest time. Last one. Not to be wasted.
End Games is in many ways the typical Zen novel. Once more Zen has been posted in unfamiliar territory. This time he's a Questore in Calabria, as the previous fellow accidentally shot off his own toes. The Americans are making a movie in the area about The Apocalypse. Except that they aren't. They're really looking for the tomb of Alaric and the treasure buried with him. An American with the film crew is kidnapped for ransom, then savagely executed. Except that he isn't American at all but a scion of the local ruling family. Except that he isn't.
As usual identity is a shifty thing in Dibdin's world. People very often aren't what they're supposed to be, aren't even what they think they are. Dibdin again uses multiple protagonists and tells his story through them, never explaining much, not explaining much at all. The plot consists of "carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts, of accidental judgements, casual slaughters, of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause, and, in this upshot, purposes mistook fallen on th'inventor's heads", to quote old Horatio. The last thing, by the way, quite literally.
Zen manages to solve the convoluted case, after a fashion. Of course he gets bollocksed by his superiors. Well, time to go home anyway. So he gets stuck on a railway platform, temporarily unable to get home, as the trains seldom if ever run on time anymore.
The image of Zen, having accomplished his task, stuck on a platform, in a sort of limbo, unable to get home, seems haunting - like the "hail and farewell" of the author himself.
Hail and farewell, old fellow.
This was back in the day when Nicholas Meyer had recently published his seminal pastiche The Seven-Per-Cent solution, and everything seemed possible. Meyer had taken a jaded, hackneyed, severely vulgarised character and made him exciting again. After that it was another game entirely. The old rules no longer applied. Anything could happen.
Dibdin went one further. His pastiche was cheeky, oh yes very cheeky indeed, it was clever - and above all it was dangerous. After all - the man had the nerve to make Sherlock Holmes not only face Jack the Ripper but be Jack the Ripper. How macabre! How absolutely refreshing and delightful!
The Last Sherlock Holmes Story quite simply altered my consciousness. I don't think I've ever fully recovered from the book. From that moment on Dibdin was a marked man. Anything he wrote I read.
Took eight years for him to follow up with another book. A Rich Full Death, while not as exciting as the first one, was still a wonderfully grotesque book. It had the poet Robert Browning as the protagonist (and possible murderer), it had a series of macabre murders, it had eerie atmosphere in spades and wit in buckets. It also began the Dibdin's long literary association with Italy.
The next one, Ratking, came out after two years. This time the protagonist was an Italian policeman called Aurelio Zen. It showed us the seamy underbelly of Italy, the Italy we all knew and suspected existed, but to the existence of which nobody would admit. Not as good a book as the two previous one, but still entertaining. The Tryst, the next novel, was short, cryptic, hard to define or even to grasp. It was polished, elegant, obscure. Maybe there was a crime, maybe there wasn't. By the end one didn't much care. Then another Zen, Vendetta. Hang on, he wasn't trying to turn this Zen chap into a serial character was he? He wasn't? I mean, that's where the money is, churning out the same book over and over again in slightly different form, that's what the readers and thus the book publishing industry wanted, but surely Dibdin was above such petty and grubby thinking? Wasn't he?
In 1991 it was time for Dirty Tricks. And what a brilliant novel that was! Dark, funny, ironic, and with the snotty and superior narrator ending up with egg on his face, justly so. Dibdin even had the cheek to let his protagonist meet an oddly familiar Thames Valley Inspector called Moss who liked doing crossword puzzles and listening to Wagner. Oh the dramatic irony of the book. Superb. This was a masterpiece.
Now there seemed to be a pattern. The Zens and the non-Zens seemed to alternate. And the Zens weren't that bad, really, once one got used to them. Cabal was quite amusing, Dead Lagoon and Cosi Fan Tutti positively splendid. In Dead Lagoon we were granted a wonderful view of Venice, Cosi Fan Tutti was a criminal opera buffa (after the fashion of Mozart's opera of the almost identical name) where impostors flourished and identities were mistook and life was just one delicious game. Here was Dibdin at his best, bubbly, sparkling, witty, ironic.
The non-Zen books, however, took a turn for the worse. The Dying of the Light and Thanksgiving were pretty bleak. Dark Spectre was a surprisingly un-Dibdinian thriller about an American religious cult with deplorable suicidal tendencies. Not bad, with many fine insights in fact, but nothing special. In America Dibdin seemed to be on alien turf, not really at home with the language or the ethos. Any number of American thriller writers could have churned out the book. For them it would have been a high point. Not so for Dibdin.
So the Zen books were the thing, then. In them one could find the old clever, bubbly Michael. Right?
Which is of course when it all went down in flames. A Long Finish was pretty boring. Bleak and boring. The next ones, Blood Rain and And Then You Die were positively depressing. It was like Dibdin was fed up with life in general and his own life in particular and the only way to fight it was to pour it all out on paper. It was like he had to take all that was dark and miserable in his soul and chuck it in his books to cope. Unfortunately the depression did not elevate the books. The depression just went in a corner and sagged there, too tired and weary to stand up and give a mighty roar.
Time perchance to kiss Dibdin off?
I never made a conscious decision to stop reading his books, to sever the connection, to finish our fruitful relationship that had lasted a good twenty years. He just faded away. There were other books, there always are other books. That's the curse and the blessing of it. I was half conscious of the fact that new books about Zen were being written and published. Sometimes I caught a glimpse of them in a bookstore. They didn't register particularly.
Then suddenly he died. In 2007, far too early.
Sometime after that I came across the penultimate Zen novel, Back to Bologna. And of course bought it. Reading it I was flabbergasted. This was the old Dibdin! The man was back on form, at the top of his game! The book was funny, clever, ironic, cheeky, bubbly - everything one expected and hoped for. The characters were lively, the plot suitably arabesque, the patter delightfully tongue-in-cheek. It was a marvel. One of the best Zens.
Of course I had to dig up the previous Zen, Medusa. While not as brilliant as Back to Bologna, it was still a splendid read. Things had definitely taken a turn for the better. The slump was over.
Then there was the last one, the posthumously published End Games. The positively last one. No more Dibdin'd to be had neither for love nor money. Kept putting it off for the longest time. Last one. Not to be wasted.
End Games is in many ways the typical Zen novel. Once more Zen has been posted in unfamiliar territory. This time he's a Questore in Calabria, as the previous fellow accidentally shot off his own toes. The Americans are making a movie in the area about The Apocalypse. Except that they aren't. They're really looking for the tomb of Alaric and the treasure buried with him. An American with the film crew is kidnapped for ransom, then savagely executed. Except that he isn't American at all but a scion of the local ruling family. Except that he isn't.
As usual identity is a shifty thing in Dibdin's world. People very often aren't what they're supposed to be, aren't even what they think they are. Dibdin again uses multiple protagonists and tells his story through them, never explaining much, not explaining much at all. The plot consists of "carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts, of accidental judgements, casual slaughters, of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause, and, in this upshot, purposes mistook fallen on th'inventor's heads", to quote old Horatio. The last thing, by the way, quite literally.
Zen manages to solve the convoluted case, after a fashion. Of course he gets bollocksed by his superiors. Well, time to go home anyway. So he gets stuck on a railway platform, temporarily unable to get home, as the trains seldom if ever run on time anymore.
The image of Zen, having accomplished his task, stuck on a platform, in a sort of limbo, unable to get home, seems haunting - like the "hail and farewell" of the author himself.
Hail and farewell, old fellow.
09/12/2009
Mr. Holmes Goes to the Moving Pictures
I'm pretty sure I've read Chris Steinbrunner and Norman Michaels's The Films of Sherlock Holmes some years ago, but when last week I came across it window shopping I had to buy it. As a guide to Holmes movies up till 1978 (when it was published) it's fairly unbeatable, even if there's more than a bit too much attention given to the Rathbone series (which to me seems pretty much the villainous low point in Sherlockian cinema, not to put too fine a point on it). The pictures are glorious, absolutely delicious, and there are plenty of them. They make even the weak movies seem like something one definitely wants to see, nay needs to see.
The history of the Sherlockian cinema is long, if not always particularly edifying. The first Holmes movie hails from as early as 1900. It is a short short comic bit, lasting only a minute or so, called Sherlock Holmes Baffled. In it Holmes takes on a burglar who is audacious enough to break and enter into the sacred Baker Street premises. It's hardly more than a joke. Holmes corners the burglar who then, in an utterly baffling manner, disappears through the cinematic magic of stop-camera action.
In 1905 we have The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes with the esteemed American actor Maurice Costello. He repeats the role in the particularly inaptly named 1908 film Sherlock Holmes and the Great Murder Mystery. In the movie Holmes solves the case by revealing that the murderer is in fact - a deranged gorilla. Poe anyone? His client is none other than his "old college chum" Dr Watson. Right. This film sounds so bizarre and ludicrous that I'd definitely want to see it.
In 1908 we get a Scandinavian Holmes - the Danish Sherlock Holmes i livesfare. In the movie Holmes faces not only Moriarty but Raffles as well. Other Danish films follow, Denmark being one of the early super powers of silent film. In 1915 there's a German Holmes movie (bit odd that actually, when one thinks of it, Germany being in a war against England) Der Hund von Baskervilles. Maybe the first movie version of the novel? Other German films follow.
The first British movies seem not to have survived. Georges Treville played Holmes in eight films. Most of them apparently based on the Canon.
The American William Gillette is of course the Sherlock Holmes of the turn of the century. He was a distinguished actor but also an extremely successful playwright whose play Sherlock Holmes (1905) pretty much moulded how Holmes was viewed in those days. He even got the Conanical seal of approval for his treatment of the great detective. When he asked for permission to marry Holmes in the play, Doyle's legendarily nonchalant reply was: "You may marry him, or murder or do what you like with him." Carte blanche. At that point Doyle was so fed up with Holmes he just didn't care.
I wonder. Had Doyle's reply been less nonchalant, would Holmes's cinematic fate have been less degrading? Would he, in the subsequent movies, have received a less cavalier treatment?
It was inevitable that the hugely popular Gillette play be turned into a movie. This happened in 1916. The movie was called, plainly, Sherlock Holmes, with Gillette of course in the title role. Sadly, like so many other early silents, it's lost. At the time Gillette was no less than 63. Perhaps a bit long in the tooth to play Holmes? But maybe not entirely past it?
The English Eille Norwood enters the picture in 1921. He too, at the time, is almost in his sixties. But still seems to be able to pull off the role. Between 1921 and 1923 he makes no less than forty-seven films, most of them long destroyed. In the stills he looks quite impressive: lean, brooding, imperial, haughty, beak-nosed and hatchet-profiled - quite the aloof calculating machine. The scripts follow the Canon closely.
The films are short, only 20 minutes a piece, which was probably a good thing. There was no need to invent any extra action for Holmes or unnecessarily convolute the plot, it was quite sufficient to follow the short story in question - it was a perfect fit. As the films were presented in three blocks of fifteen films each - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Last Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - they seem to have been a precursor of the television series. Furthermore two longer features were filmed: The Hound of the Baskervilles in 1922 and The Sign of Four in 1923.
Norwood (what a good Canonical name he has!) took his brief with the utmost seriousness. "My idea of Holmes is that he is absolutely quiet. Nothing ruffles him but he is a man who intuitively seizes on points without revealing that he has done so, and nurses them up with complete inaction until the moment when he is called upon to exercise his wonderful detective powers. Then he is like a cat - the person he is after is the only person in all the world, and he is oblivious of everything else till his quarry is run to earth."
He also seems to have been quite the master of disguise. Like Holmes Norwood spent many an hour perfecting his disguises, inventing new methods and devices, and many of his disguises (if the stills are anything to go by) really are quite impressive.
In the book Steinbrunner and Michaels note that most of Norwood's films are falling apart, reel by reel, frame by frame, and urgently need restoration. This was in 1978. I wonder how many films are intact and in perfect viewing condition today, thirty years later?
Then in 1922 it was time to film Gillette's play a second time. Again with the plain title Sherlock Holmes. Now John Barrymore of the famed acting dynasty donned the deerstalker and trusted meerschaum. Interesting choice. I'm not entirely convinced of his greatness as an actor, not as a movie actor anyway, as he's always hamming it up for dear life, though I must admit he's pretty good in Cukor's Romeo and Juliet as Mercutio (which obviously is the perfect choice for a dedicated ham). I haven't seen the film. In the pictures he looks quite convincing - and one must bear in mind that Gillette's Holmes is indeed a romantic hero and the play ends in Holmes proposing to the heroine. The film ends with Holmes shooting off on a honeymoon with his blushing bride. So probably the young Barrymore (young? he's forty actually, but looks far more youthful) is a fine choice in this instance. In the pictures the most interesting thing of the film would be the Moriarty of Gustav von Seyffertitz - who's made up as a protosimian, something primeaeval that's escaped from Doyle's Lost World, a truly ghastly and atavistically terrifying creature. Though, perhaps, not very much to do with Doyle's original creation.
The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1929) gives us the first Holmes, the very British Clive Brook, of the sound era. The film is directed by Basil Dean and based on the short story The Dying Detective. Based? Well sort of. In the movie Holmes dashes to the rescue of Watson's grown-up daughter and Moriarty and his dastardly sidekick Colonel Moran are up to their old tricks again (this time Moriarty heads an international "radio-tapping ring"- with "super criminals using the illicit information to plot huge capers"!). The whole thing takes place on a plush modern ocean liner. So no, it's not really a totally faithful rendition of the Doyle original. Another one I haven't seen. Well worth a look, it sounds like.
Brook, whom one remembers best from Sternberg's movies (he was Marlene Dietrich's love interest in the superb Shanghai Express), did another Holmes film in 1932. This was Sherlock Holmes , the third film version of the Gillette play. Again it's wedding bells for old Sherlock. Watson is played by Reginald Owen.
In 1931 it's time for a different Holmes. This Holmes is a very modern Holmes. Away with the deerstalker, away with the calabash. "Curiously, the house number is not 221B but 107, and there are other far more startling changes as well. Baker Street is "computerized" - in a 1931 version of up-to-the-minute efficiency. The anteroom to Holmes's study is filled with secretaries, stenographers, intercoms and automated filing systems." When Watson comes with the details of the case Holmes informs him that the entire discussion has been recorded over an intercom.
The film is called The Speckled Band and as Holmes we have the Canadian born Raymond Massey. The villain, Rylott (sic), is played by Lyn Harding, later a hissing and particularly hammy Moriarty in the Wontner series. It seems odd to have such a super modern Baker Street clashing with the very eerie atmosphere of the country manor where the villainy takes place - this is after all one of Doyle's most poignantly Gothic tales. Apparently the director Jack Raymond pulls it off quite nicely. Another film I'd dearly like to see.
1931 also gives yet another version of The Hound of the Baskervilles. This time it's pudgy Robert Rendel who plays Sherlock. Rendel doesn't look entirely wrong for the part, he does indeed bear a certain resemblance to the legendary Paget drawings, but he's far too stocky to convince. And, what's far worse, he looks sedentary and middle-aged. That won't do for Holmes who must look alert and ageless, however old he is. The most interesting thing about this film might be that the dialogue is by Edgar Wallace.
Arthur Wontner begins his stint as Sherlock in 1931 (a plentiful year that) with Sherlock Holmes' Fatal Hour. He goes on to make four more Holmes movies.
Then 1933 it's A Study in Scarlet with Reginald Owen, who played Watson in Brook's Sherlock Holmes the year before - making him the only fellow to do them both.
And after Wontner and Owen it's Basil Rathbone. His first movie, The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) isn't actually bad. It is in fact quite good, if one can faze out that infernal idiot Nigel Bruce. (I don't like Nigel Bruce. I really don't like him. He's a living insult to Watson and Doyle, a slap in the face of every true Sherlockian.) And the interesting thing about it, the positively revolutionary thing about it is - it is set in the past, it's a Victorian period piece. This is quite amazing. They'd been doing Holmes on the silver screen for forty years and this is the first Victorian Holmes movie.
Now when one thinks about it a little further it isn't so odd after all. When they started doing the films Holmes was still active. He was a contemporary character, and remained so for almost thirty years. He did his bit in the Great War, as can be read in His Last Bow. The last collection of short stories, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, came out in 1927. Small wonder then that Holmes wasn't seen as an exclusively or even primarily Victorian character.
The second Rathbone entry, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, also 1939, was another period movie. Then it changed. The first two movies were produced by Twentieth Century Fox. The next twelve movies were produced by Universal. They had the bright idea to modernize Holmes, have him fight the Nazis. And what rubbish most of the movies are. Blimey. What utter rubbish. The angels weep.
The history of the Sherlockian cinema is long, if not always particularly edifying. The first Holmes movie hails from as early as 1900. It is a short short comic bit, lasting only a minute or so, called Sherlock Holmes Baffled. In it Holmes takes on a burglar who is audacious enough to break and enter into the sacred Baker Street premises. It's hardly more than a joke. Holmes corners the burglar who then, in an utterly baffling manner, disappears through the cinematic magic of stop-camera action.
In 1905 we have The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes with the esteemed American actor Maurice Costello. He repeats the role in the particularly inaptly named 1908 film Sherlock Holmes and the Great Murder Mystery. In the movie Holmes solves the case by revealing that the murderer is in fact - a deranged gorilla. Poe anyone? His client is none other than his "old college chum" Dr Watson. Right. This film sounds so bizarre and ludicrous that I'd definitely want to see it.
In 1908 we get a Scandinavian Holmes - the Danish Sherlock Holmes i livesfare. In the movie Holmes faces not only Moriarty but Raffles as well. Other Danish films follow, Denmark being one of the early super powers of silent film. In 1915 there's a German Holmes movie (bit odd that actually, when one thinks of it, Germany being in a war against England) Der Hund von Baskervilles. Maybe the first movie version of the novel? Other German films follow.
The first British movies seem not to have survived. Georges Treville played Holmes in eight films. Most of them apparently based on the Canon.
The American William Gillette is of course the Sherlock Holmes of the turn of the century. He was a distinguished actor but also an extremely successful playwright whose play Sherlock Holmes (1905) pretty much moulded how Holmes was viewed in those days. He even got the Conanical seal of approval for his treatment of the great detective. When he asked for permission to marry Holmes in the play, Doyle's legendarily nonchalant reply was: "You may marry him, or murder or do what you like with him." Carte blanche. At that point Doyle was so fed up with Holmes he just didn't care.
I wonder. Had Doyle's reply been less nonchalant, would Holmes's cinematic fate have been less degrading? Would he, in the subsequent movies, have received a less cavalier treatment?
It was inevitable that the hugely popular Gillette play be turned into a movie. This happened in 1916. The movie was called, plainly, Sherlock Holmes, with Gillette of course in the title role. Sadly, like so many other early silents, it's lost. At the time Gillette was no less than 63. Perhaps a bit long in the tooth to play Holmes? But maybe not entirely past it?
The English Eille Norwood enters the picture in 1921. He too, at the time, is almost in his sixties. But still seems to be able to pull off the role. Between 1921 and 1923 he makes no less than forty-seven films, most of them long destroyed. In the stills he looks quite impressive: lean, brooding, imperial, haughty, beak-nosed and hatchet-profiled - quite the aloof calculating machine. The scripts follow the Canon closely.
The films are short, only 20 minutes a piece, which was probably a good thing. There was no need to invent any extra action for Holmes or unnecessarily convolute the plot, it was quite sufficient to follow the short story in question - it was a perfect fit. As the films were presented in three blocks of fifteen films each - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Last Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - they seem to have been a precursor of the television series. Furthermore two longer features were filmed: The Hound of the Baskervilles in 1922 and The Sign of Four in 1923.
Norwood (what a good Canonical name he has!) took his brief with the utmost seriousness. "My idea of Holmes is that he is absolutely quiet. Nothing ruffles him but he is a man who intuitively seizes on points without revealing that he has done so, and nurses them up with complete inaction until the moment when he is called upon to exercise his wonderful detective powers. Then he is like a cat - the person he is after is the only person in all the world, and he is oblivious of everything else till his quarry is run to earth."
He also seems to have been quite the master of disguise. Like Holmes Norwood spent many an hour perfecting his disguises, inventing new methods and devices, and many of his disguises (if the stills are anything to go by) really are quite impressive.
In the book Steinbrunner and Michaels note that most of Norwood's films are falling apart, reel by reel, frame by frame, and urgently need restoration. This was in 1978. I wonder how many films are intact and in perfect viewing condition today, thirty years later?
Then in 1922 it was time to film Gillette's play a second time. Again with the plain title Sherlock Holmes. Now John Barrymore of the famed acting dynasty donned the deerstalker and trusted meerschaum. Interesting choice. I'm not entirely convinced of his greatness as an actor, not as a movie actor anyway, as he's always hamming it up for dear life, though I must admit he's pretty good in Cukor's Romeo and Juliet as Mercutio (which obviously is the perfect choice for a dedicated ham). I haven't seen the film. In the pictures he looks quite convincing - and one must bear in mind that Gillette's Holmes is indeed a romantic hero and the play ends in Holmes proposing to the heroine. The film ends with Holmes shooting off on a honeymoon with his blushing bride. So probably the young Barrymore (young? he's forty actually, but looks far more youthful) is a fine choice in this instance. In the pictures the most interesting thing of the film would be the Moriarty of Gustav von Seyffertitz - who's made up as a protosimian, something primeaeval that's escaped from Doyle's Lost World, a truly ghastly and atavistically terrifying creature. Though, perhaps, not very much to do with Doyle's original creation.
The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1929) gives us the first Holmes, the very British Clive Brook, of the sound era. The film is directed by Basil Dean and based on the short story The Dying Detective. Based? Well sort of. In the movie Holmes dashes to the rescue of Watson's grown-up daughter and Moriarty and his dastardly sidekick Colonel Moran are up to their old tricks again (this time Moriarty heads an international "radio-tapping ring"- with "super criminals using the illicit information to plot huge capers"!). The whole thing takes place on a plush modern ocean liner. So no, it's not really a totally faithful rendition of the Doyle original. Another one I haven't seen. Well worth a look, it sounds like.
Brook, whom one remembers best from Sternberg's movies (he was Marlene Dietrich's love interest in the superb Shanghai Express), did another Holmes film in 1932. This was Sherlock Holmes , the third film version of the Gillette play. Again it's wedding bells for old Sherlock. Watson is played by Reginald Owen.
In 1931 it's time for a different Holmes. This Holmes is a very modern Holmes. Away with the deerstalker, away with the calabash. "Curiously, the house number is not 221B but 107, and there are other far more startling changes as well. Baker Street is "computerized" - in a 1931 version of up-to-the-minute efficiency. The anteroom to Holmes's study is filled with secretaries, stenographers, intercoms and automated filing systems." When Watson comes with the details of the case Holmes informs him that the entire discussion has been recorded over an intercom.
The film is called The Speckled Band and as Holmes we have the Canadian born Raymond Massey. The villain, Rylott (sic), is played by Lyn Harding, later a hissing and particularly hammy Moriarty in the Wontner series. It seems odd to have such a super modern Baker Street clashing with the very eerie atmosphere of the country manor where the villainy takes place - this is after all one of Doyle's most poignantly Gothic tales. Apparently the director Jack Raymond pulls it off quite nicely. Another film I'd dearly like to see.
1931 also gives yet another version of The Hound of the Baskervilles. This time it's pudgy Robert Rendel who plays Sherlock. Rendel doesn't look entirely wrong for the part, he does indeed bear a certain resemblance to the legendary Paget drawings, but he's far too stocky to convince. And, what's far worse, he looks sedentary and middle-aged. That won't do for Holmes who must look alert and ageless, however old he is. The most interesting thing about this film might be that the dialogue is by Edgar Wallace.
Arthur Wontner begins his stint as Sherlock in 1931 (a plentiful year that) with Sherlock Holmes' Fatal Hour. He goes on to make four more Holmes movies.
Then 1933 it's A Study in Scarlet with Reginald Owen, who played Watson in Brook's Sherlock Holmes the year before - making him the only fellow to do them both.
And after Wontner and Owen it's Basil Rathbone. His first movie, The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) isn't actually bad. It is in fact quite good, if one can faze out that infernal idiot Nigel Bruce. (I don't like Nigel Bruce. I really don't like him. He's a living insult to Watson and Doyle, a slap in the face of every true Sherlockian.) And the interesting thing about it, the positively revolutionary thing about it is - it is set in the past, it's a Victorian period piece. This is quite amazing. They'd been doing Holmes on the silver screen for forty years and this is the first Victorian Holmes movie.
Now when one thinks about it a little further it isn't so odd after all. When they started doing the films Holmes was still active. He was a contemporary character, and remained so for almost thirty years. He did his bit in the Great War, as can be read in His Last Bow. The last collection of short stories, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, came out in 1927. Small wonder then that Holmes wasn't seen as an exclusively or even primarily Victorian character.
The second Rathbone entry, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, also 1939, was another period movie. Then it changed. The first two movies were produced by Twentieth Century Fox. The next twelve movies were produced by Universal. They had the bright idea to modernize Holmes, have him fight the Nazis. And what rubbish most of the movies are. Blimey. What utter rubbish. The angels weep.
06/12/2009
A Will by Any Other Name
What is Shakespeare's name? It certainly doesn't seem to be "Shakespeare", or very rarely, at least if one goes by the contemporary Elizabethan and Jacobean documentation. Bernard Shaw always spelt it without the last "e", "Shakespear", after the 18th century fashion.
The man himself ought to know, surely. However, as far as we know, William only ever signed his name upon six occasions. Three of the signatures are in his will. There he signs his name twice as "Shakspere" and once as "Shakspeare". His other signatures are "Shakspe" (with a wavy line on the "e", actually, but I don't seem to be able to reproduce it here, more's the pity), twice, and "Shaksp".
This seems to indicate that, however the name is spelt, the first part of it is pronounced with a short and rustic "a", with a similar "a" as that in shack or back, instead of the longer and more genteel "a" in shake or take. And it seems highly probable the last part was pronounced with a short, almost semi-glottal "e".
In the official documents there is a plethora of inventive spelling variations. F.E. Halliday's A Shakespeare Companion 1564-1964 gives the following list: 1564 (christening) Gulielmus filius Johannes Shakspere; 1582 (betrothal) Wm Shaxpere; a day later and another parrish the delightful and faintly ribald William Shagspere; 1582 (christening of daughter Susannah) William Shakespeare; 1585 (christening of Hamnet and Judith) William Shakspere; 1594 (paid for court performances) Willm Shakespeare; 1596 (burial of Hamnet) William Shakspere; again 1596 (the cryptic William Wayte writ) Willelmum Shakspere; 1597 (buying a house) Willielmus Shakespeare; same year (tax dodging) William Shackspere; 1598 (corn hoarding) Wm. Shackespere; again 1598 (Frances Meres writing in his diary) "mellifluous & honey-tongued Shakespeare"; again 1598 (Stratford Chamber Account) Shakespeare and Shaxspere; 1599 (Globe ownership) William Shakespeare; 1599 again (defaulting on a debt) Willelmus Shakespeare; yet again 1599 (and the same debt) Willelmus Shakspeare.
On to the new century: 1600 (Stationer's register) "Wrytten by Master Shakespere"; same year (debt again) Willelmus Shakspeare; 1601 (will) "Anne Shaxspere, wyf unto Mr Wyllyam Shaxspere"; 1602 (purchasing land) William Shakespere; again 1602 (securing a warranty) Willielmus Shakespeare; 1603 (receiving Royal Licence) William Shakespeare; 1604 (supplying red cloth for royal coronation) William Shakespeare; again 1604 (court case) Willielmus Shexpere; same year (property survey) William Shakespere; 1605 (will) William Shakespeare; same year (transaction) William Shakespeare; 1606 (property survey) Willielmus Shakespere; 1607 (marriage of daughter) Shaxpere; 1608 (becoming a share-holder in the Blackfriar's theatre) Willelmus Shakespeare; 1609 (court case) Willielmus Shackspeare; same year (burial of mother) "Mayry Shaxspere wydow"; 1610 (property business) Willielmus Shakespere; 1611 (bill of complaint) "William Shackspere, gentleman"; again 1611 (contributing towards prosecuting a bill in parliament) William Shackspere; same year (lease of a barn) Mr Shaxper; 1613 (will) William Shackspere; same year (purchasing a house) William Shakespeare; also 1613 (receiving payment) Mr Shakspeare; 1615 (bill of complaint) Willyam Shakespere; 1616 (marriage of daughter) Shakspere; same year (burial) Will Shakspere, gent.
While there are some "Shakespeares" in the lot they really aren't that plentiful. Most of them appear in documents from London and the theatrical circles. The more official and pompous the occasion, the more likely that his name is spelt "Shakespeare". To his actor friends he is mostly "Shackspere" or "Shakspere". Back home the spelling is consistently erratic with such gems as "Shagspere", "Shaxper", "Shaxpere" and "Shaxspere". Not to forget the pearl "Shexpere"!
Then there is the published work. The first publications are poems: Venus and Adonis in 1593 and The Rape of Lucrece in 1594. In the first volume there is no name on the title page but in the dedication the poet signs his name as William Shakespeare. (Or actually, the second "s" is a long and narrow Germanic "s" of the old-fashioned variety.) The same is true of the second volume.
In 1598 the first play Love's Labour's Lost is published with Shakespeare's name on the title page (there have been several anonymous quartos). The spelling is the regular one of today: "Shakespeare". The 1603 edition of Hamlet, however, the infamous Bad Quarto, has Shakespeare's name spelt on the title page as "Shake-speare" with an unnecessary and really quite inexplicable hyphen. Next it's more poetry. The sonnets come out in 1609. Again Shakespeare's name is spelt with a hyphen. The hyphen recurs in John Webster's 1612 Quarto The White Devil where Webster, in a preface, writes about "the copious industry of M. Shake-speare". (Though my Penguin English Library edition of The White Devil looses the hyphen. This is a particular problem with modern editions - they tinker with spelling blast them!)
Before the Folio of 1623 there are about thirty quartos published with the author's name on the title page. In about half of the volumes his name is spelt with the hyphen, "William Shake-speare". (The King Lear edition of 1608 has the name, curiously, as "Shak-speare".)
What is the significance of the hyphen? Why does it suddenly appear on the title pages, out of nowhere as it were? The Anti-Strafordians have a pat answer: the hyphen is there to signify that the name "William Shake-spear" is in fact no real name but rather a pseudonym. And meant to be understood as a pseudonym or nome de plume. Spelt like that it does indeed smack of one.
But if so, then why isn't it on every title page? And why isn't it there from the start: why, one wonders, were the earliest Shakesperean volumes as by "William Shakespeare" and not "William Shake-speare"? And why do both versions (including the slightly bizarre "Shakes-speare") peacefully coexist in the prefaratory material of the Folio?
It is well known that spelling was a very personal matter in the 16th and 17th centuries, most names were spelt by ear and were therefore at the mercy of the clerk in question. Most names, it seems, had no commonly accepted spellings. Not unless they were really noble and not always then. Quirky variations were no exception, a shaky grasp of the language never a rarity.
But it does seem to me that all the misspellings cannot be purely aleatory. There are so many of them and there would seem to be some method in the madness. In fact I believe that there are certain higly interesting patterns in the misspellings of Shakespeare's name. Patterns that might reveal quite fascinating things about the man and the author.
One thing is certain: the pronunciation of "Shakespeare" or "Shake-speare" is huguely different from that of "Shakspere" or "Shaxspere". Is that merely due to gentrification? Surely, if the name is spelt by ear, the forms are not interchangeable? Not even in those erratic days? Or is it all a matter of rustic northern spelling versus citified southern spelling?
At the moment the name is yet another unsolved mystery in the conundrum that is William Shakespeare. As if there weren't enough of those without it.
The man himself ought to know, surely. However, as far as we know, William only ever signed his name upon six occasions. Three of the signatures are in his will. There he signs his name twice as "Shakspere" and once as "Shakspeare". His other signatures are "Shakspe" (with a wavy line on the "e", actually, but I don't seem to be able to reproduce it here, more's the pity), twice, and "Shaksp".
This seems to indicate that, however the name is spelt, the first part of it is pronounced with a short and rustic "a", with a similar "a" as that in shack or back, instead of the longer and more genteel "a" in shake or take. And it seems highly probable the last part was pronounced with a short, almost semi-glottal "e".
In the official documents there is a plethora of inventive spelling variations. F.E. Halliday's A Shakespeare Companion 1564-1964 gives the following list: 1564 (christening) Gulielmus filius Johannes Shakspere; 1582 (betrothal) Wm Shaxpere; a day later and another parrish the delightful and faintly ribald William Shagspere; 1582 (christening of daughter Susannah) William Shakespeare; 1585 (christening of Hamnet and Judith) William Shakspere; 1594 (paid for court performances) Willm Shakespeare; 1596 (burial of Hamnet) William Shakspere; again 1596 (the cryptic William Wayte writ) Willelmum Shakspere; 1597 (buying a house) Willielmus Shakespeare; same year (tax dodging) William Shackspere; 1598 (corn hoarding) Wm. Shackespere; again 1598 (Frances Meres writing in his diary) "mellifluous & honey-tongued Shakespeare"; again 1598 (Stratford Chamber Account) Shakespeare and Shaxspere; 1599 (Globe ownership) William Shakespeare; 1599 again (defaulting on a debt) Willelmus Shakespeare; yet again 1599 (and the same debt) Willelmus Shakspeare.
On to the new century: 1600 (Stationer's register) "Wrytten by Master Shakespere"; same year (debt again) Willelmus Shakspeare; 1601 (will) "Anne Shaxspere, wyf unto Mr Wyllyam Shaxspere"; 1602 (purchasing land) William Shakespere; again 1602 (securing a warranty) Willielmus Shakespeare; 1603 (receiving Royal Licence) William Shakespeare; 1604 (supplying red cloth for royal coronation) William Shakespeare; again 1604 (court case) Willielmus Shexpere; same year (property survey) William Shakespere; 1605 (will) William Shakespeare; same year (transaction) William Shakespeare; 1606 (property survey) Willielmus Shakespere; 1607 (marriage of daughter) Shaxpere; 1608 (becoming a share-holder in the Blackfriar's theatre) Willelmus Shakespeare; 1609 (court case) Willielmus Shackspeare; same year (burial of mother) "Mayry Shaxspere wydow"; 1610 (property business) Willielmus Shakespere; 1611 (bill of complaint) "William Shackspere, gentleman"; again 1611 (contributing towards prosecuting a bill in parliament) William Shackspere; same year (lease of a barn) Mr Shaxper; 1613 (will) William Shackspere; same year (purchasing a house) William Shakespeare; also 1613 (receiving payment) Mr Shakspeare; 1615 (bill of complaint) Willyam Shakespere; 1616 (marriage of daughter) Shakspere; same year (burial) Will Shakspere, gent.
While there are some "Shakespeares" in the lot they really aren't that plentiful. Most of them appear in documents from London and the theatrical circles. The more official and pompous the occasion, the more likely that his name is spelt "Shakespeare". To his actor friends he is mostly "Shackspere" or "Shakspere". Back home the spelling is consistently erratic with such gems as "Shagspere", "Shaxper", "Shaxpere" and "Shaxspere". Not to forget the pearl "Shexpere"!
Then there is the published work. The first publications are poems: Venus and Adonis in 1593 and The Rape of Lucrece in 1594. In the first volume there is no name on the title page but in the dedication the poet signs his name as William Shakespeare. (Or actually, the second "s" is a long and narrow Germanic "s" of the old-fashioned variety.) The same is true of the second volume.
In 1598 the first play Love's Labour's Lost is published with Shakespeare's name on the title page (there have been several anonymous quartos). The spelling is the regular one of today: "Shakespeare". The 1603 edition of Hamlet, however, the infamous Bad Quarto, has Shakespeare's name spelt on the title page as "Shake-speare" with an unnecessary and really quite inexplicable hyphen. Next it's more poetry. The sonnets come out in 1609. Again Shakespeare's name is spelt with a hyphen. The hyphen recurs in John Webster's 1612 Quarto The White Devil where Webster, in a preface, writes about "the copious industry of M. Shake-speare". (Though my Penguin English Library edition of The White Devil looses the hyphen. This is a particular problem with modern editions - they tinker with spelling blast them!)
Before the Folio of 1623 there are about thirty quartos published with the author's name on the title page. In about half of the volumes his name is spelt with the hyphen, "William Shake-speare". (The King Lear edition of 1608 has the name, curiously, as "Shak-speare".)
What is the significance of the hyphen? Why does it suddenly appear on the title pages, out of nowhere as it were? The Anti-Strafordians have a pat answer: the hyphen is there to signify that the name "William Shake-spear" is in fact no real name but rather a pseudonym. And meant to be understood as a pseudonym or nome de plume. Spelt like that it does indeed smack of one.
But if so, then why isn't it on every title page? And why isn't it there from the start: why, one wonders, were the earliest Shakesperean volumes as by "William Shakespeare" and not "William Shake-speare"? And why do both versions (including the slightly bizarre "Shakes-speare") peacefully coexist in the prefaratory material of the Folio?
It is well known that spelling was a very personal matter in the 16th and 17th centuries, most names were spelt by ear and were therefore at the mercy of the clerk in question. Most names, it seems, had no commonly accepted spellings. Not unless they were really noble and not always then. Quirky variations were no exception, a shaky grasp of the language never a rarity.
But it does seem to me that all the misspellings cannot be purely aleatory. There are so many of them and there would seem to be some method in the madness. In fact I believe that there are certain higly interesting patterns in the misspellings of Shakespeare's name. Patterns that might reveal quite fascinating things about the man and the author.
One thing is certain: the pronunciation of "Shakespeare" or "Shake-speare" is huguely different from that of "Shakspere" or "Shaxspere". Is that merely due to gentrification? Surely, if the name is spelt by ear, the forms are not interchangeable? Not even in those erratic days? Or is it all a matter of rustic northern spelling versus citified southern spelling?
At the moment the name is yet another unsolved mystery in the conundrum that is William Shakespeare. As if there weren't enough of those without it.
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