The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939) - film review

When Professor Moriarty is acquitted of a murder charge, his arch-nemesis Sherlock Holmes vows to bring him to book.  Moriarty rises to this challenge by concocting what he believes will be the crime of the century.  Whilst he prepares his master plan, the villainous professor distracts Holmes with another mystery.  When her brother Lloyd receives a note with a drawing of a man with an albatross around his neck, Ann Brandon consults Holmes, fearing that her brother’s life may be in danger.  Sure enough, a few days later, Lloyd Brandon is dead, strangled and his head smashed in.  Suspicion falls immediately on the Brandon’s family solicitor Jerrold Hunter, who was found at the scene of the crime with a gun in his hand.  Only a few hours before, Dr Watson saw Hunter in the company of none other than Professor Moriarty...

After the immediate success of The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939), Twentieth Century Fox wasted no time in making a follow up, with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce reprising the roles of the legendary crime-fighting duo Holmes and Watson.  Released just six months after the first film, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was just as popular and Fox may have continued the series had the outbreak of World War Two not intervened.  Rathbone and Bruce would continue playing Holmes and Watson in a popular American radio series, The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which ran from 1939 to 1946.  Their return to the big screen came in 1942, when Universal Pictures resumed the film series, with Holmes and Watson inexplicably transported fifty years in time to deal with contemporary threats, partly for wartime propaganda purposes, but also presumably to keep down the production costs.  

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is one of the most popular films in the Rathbone-Bruce series, even if the plot is frankly bonkers and has far more overt comedy than is good for it (for example, Holmes trying to develop a fly repellent with his violin).  Although nominally a B movie, the film has exceptional production values, offering an impressive recreation of Victorian London (complete with fog-shrouded streets busy with authentic horse-drawn cabs) and some stylish chiaroscuro cinematography which is on a par with that of the best film noir.  Note particularly the use of oblique camera angles to suggest menace and heighten the tension.

As ever, Basil Rathbone excels as the pipe-smoking gentleman sleuth, capturing the essence of Conan Doyle’s creation whilst bringing his own charm and authority to the part.  Nigel Bruce has been the subject of a great deal of criticism over the decades for his portrayal of Watson as a bumbling old fool, but his pairing with Rathbone works remarkably well and the humour he brings effectively counterbalances the darker elements of the films.  If there is just one reason for watching this film it is to see Rathbone’s music hall act, in which a cleverly disguised Holmes gets to perform a lively rendition of Oh I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside.  Somehow you can’t imagine Jeremy Brett or Peter Cushing getting away with that one.

© James Travers 2009

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