Sherlock Holmes in Washington (1943) - film review

When a British secret agent named Alfred Pettibone disappears on a train bound for Washington D.C., Sherlock Holmes is called in to investigate.  Pettibone was the courier for vital state documents from the British to American governments and calamity would ensue if these were to fall into the hands of a foreign power.  Visiting the home of the missing agent, Holmes discovers that he reduced the documents to microfilm, which he then concealed inside a match folder.  On his arrival in Washington with his associate Dr Watson, Holmes learns that, just before he was kidnapped, Pettibone managed to pass the match folder to a young woman who is about to get married.  Unfortunately, Holmes makes this deduction too late, and the woman also disappears...

The film in which Sherlock Holmes utters the immortal line "put it away, Watson" and has Watson reciting American colloquialisms to make himself better understood in the United States clearly isn’t going to be the most sober entry in the series, but amidst the silliness and obvious wartime propaganda there’s plenty of fun to be had.  Holmes’s deductive powers are put to good use as he unravels a mystery that may well have been conceived by his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and the only thing that is obviously wrong is the location, which is a clumsy and unnecessary attempt to bolster the popularity of the series in America.

On the plus side, Sherlock Holmes in Washington is well-scripted, well-directed, imaginatively shot and offers some solid performances.  George Zucco plays the bad guy again – he had previously crossed swords with Holmes as Professor Moriarty in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939) – aided and abetted by Henry Daniell, who would subsequently play Moriarty in The Woman in Green (1945).   Alas, by this stage, only five films into the series, Dr Watson has been well and truly reduced to a figure of fun - Holmes’s comedy sidekick, who is a million miles from the thoughtful and helpful ally that Conan Doyle created to assist Holmes in his fight against crime.  You can easily imagine that, by the time the series reaches its conclusion, Watson will be wearing a big red nose, complete with a full clown’s apparel, and performing hilarious pratfalls in every scene.  Is that a writer I can hear spinning in his grave?

© James Travers 2009

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