J A N E T I L I T Y

Not long ago, Nicholas Meyer – producer, director, screenwriter, and author of the Sherlockian pastiches The Seven Percent Solution, The West End Horror and The Canary Trainer– wrote a very thought-provoking article titled “Whither Holmes” for the Los Angeles Review of Books. The article addressed the dilemma of adapting a classical work or character – specifically, Sherlock Holmes – for what he called the “postliterate” audience. Mind you, I don’t think that Meyer meant “illiterate”, but rather an audience whose predominant (or only) exposure to a classical work comes by way of a derivative work. Meyer observes that: “In my years as a filmmaker in Hollywood, I’ve attended numerous meetings devoted to making Sherlock Holmes movies; invariably none of the producers in the room have ever actually read Doyle.”

How far does parsley sink into butter on a hot day?

 In an earlier blog, “Do Whatever You Like With Him” (http://janetility.com/?p=648), I had suggested that a bona fide adaptation (or pastiche, sequel, illustration) is one that correctly  identifies the source of Holmes’s timeless appeal, era and environment notwithstanding. You can discard the trappings – the dressing gowns, the gasogene, the bullet-pocked wall  – but if you want to ensure that the audience, particularly the “postliterate” are getting the genuine Sherlock, you can’t reduce the essence of what makes Holmes Holmes to quirks and conduct derived from something other than Conan Doyle.

Watson, don’t you think the peas tasted a bit off?

 Which calls to mind the 19^thcentury “Butter Wars.” In the 1880s, the growing “butter substitute” (oleomargarine) industry came up against the dairy industry. In some cases, the consumer opted for the substitute because it was cheaper and tasted okay, but in other cases, an imitation product was passed off as butter to “the great unobservant public.” By 1886, a number of “margarine acts” attempted to eliminate any possibility that imitation butter might be mistaken for, or labeled as, the legitimate product. In New Jersey, these laws stipulated that “No oleomargarine, butterine or suine, or any substance or compound or mixture in imitation or semblance of natural butter or cheese, or any substance that is rendered, made, manufactured or compounded out of animal or vegetable or mineral fat or oil not the product of pure milk or cream from pure milk shall be sold…except when contained in tubs, pails, boxes, firkins, vessels or other packages that are marked or labeled as follows: … on the outside thereof and midway between the top and bottom thereof a stripe or band at least three inches wide and extending completely around said vessel or package and said stripe or band shall be painted with black paint [and] have legibly branded and burnt in ..in two places as nearly opposite each other as possible the words ‘oleomargarine’, ‘butterine’, ‘suine’ or ‘imitation butter’.

I believe I detected the merest trace of caul fat.

 This may sound excessive until you learn that only a year or two earlier, half of what was sold as butter was reported to be an imitation product made from tinted caul fat derived from hogs. An ingenuous consumer might conclude that because the substance that they were spreading on their toast was pale yellow or lightly salted or tasty or oleaginous, or was labeled in a manner evoked butter (butterine) or was even combined with some butter, it was the real deal.

How far does parsley sink into margarine on a hot day?

 Unfortunately, there is little to prevent Meyer’s postliterate producers from passing off any substance or compound or mixture in imitation or semblance of Sherlock Holmes as the authentic character, and no requirement that the end product be labeled “imitation Sherlock”. The result is that the postliterate viewer may never appreciate how radically different Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes – the “chivalrous opponent” with his “cat-like love of personal cleanliness”, his fine balance of instinct with impartiality, and his embodiment of a great heart as well as a great brain – is from a spurious Holmes who presents as an ill-groomed, petty, socially inept vulgarian hopelessly afflicted with tachyphrasia.

 The success of any adulterated product, whether it is dairy or Doyle, will always be determined by what the consumer can be persuaded to swallow. There may be nothing at all wrong with suilline caul fat, unless you’re attempting to persuade people that it’s butter.

And don’t call me “Shirley.”

Putting Sherlock Holmes on the track of Jack the Ripper is unquestionably tempting; the Ripper murders occurred at a time when Holmes would have been an ambitious thirtysomething detective and quite receptive to a complex and challenging case. There has never been a positive identification of the Ripper, nor any explanation (other than the obvious: he died, emigrated, was incapacitated or imprisoned) for the abrupt termination of the killings. Drawing Holmes into such an intriguing, open-ended puzzle has invited the talents of authors Ellery Queen, Michael Dibdin,  Edward Hanna, Carole Nelson Douglas and Lyndsay Faye.

 Holmes vs the Ripper has been the subject of a couple films as well, and one that is both the most and least satisfying is the 1979 film Murder By Decree. Here, the plot exploits one of the more colorful theories: that the murdered women had knowledge of an illegitimate child who was the result of an affair (or unofficial marriage) between the Duke of Clarence, second in line to the throne, and the lowborn Annie Crook. Defenders of the heir confine Crook to an asylum and pressure her to reveal the child’s whereabouts while they systematically kill off the prostitutes who were privy to the liaison.

The most laudable aspect of the film – in fact the only laudable one – is in the casting. Christopher Plummer (Holmes) and James Mason (Watson) are on the somewhat mature side, but there is a wonderful compatibility that is not often (read: “almost never”) depicted in translations of the Canon. Mason does make one appreciate that Watson may be the harder role to pull off; with fewer props on which to string a performance – no pipe, no violin, no disguise, no displays of agility or temperament – an accomplished actor has to flesh out the dimensions of character without sinking into caricature. The fact that Mason can express his indignation at Holmes’s “squashing a fellow’s pea” without lapsing into the blustering inanity that was the default mode of other actors (read: “Nigel Bruce”) is commendation enough. Plummer is equally engaging – without ever lapsing into uncharacteristic sentimentality, his performance hints at the “great heart as well as of a great brain”: commanding, compassionate, humorous and completely authentic, even when saddled with the deerstalker and Inverness.

Mason, Finlay (as Lestrade) and Plummer

There is an impressive supporting cast as well: Donald Sutherland, David Hemmings, John Gielgud, Anthony Quayle, Frank Finlay and particularly Susan Clark as Mary Kelly, and Genevieve Bujold as Annie Crook; their scenes with Plummer are the most poignant moments of the film. (As an interesting side note, Finlay, who portrays Lestrade here, also portrayed Lestrade in another Holmes vs the Ripper film, the 1965, A Study in Terror; Quayle, who here is Sir Charles Warren was Doctor Murray in the ’65 film).

Plummer with Clark (as Mary Kelly)

Plummer with Bujold (as Annie Crook)

As for the everything else: watching this again (I had seen it years ago), I realized what is unsatisfying about it. For a film that offers an intriguing theory about the Ripper that brings together a royal conspiracy and a vicious serial killer with literature’s most famous detective, the film is rather suspenseless. Perhaps it is the jarring score that forecasts every crime so relentlessly that the crime itself becomes almost anticlimactic. Perhaps it is the reticence with which the crimes are rendered – one can be shocking without being explicit. And, perhaps, it is the awkward angling of the exterior shots to camouflage the use of sound stages. At any rate, it remains just good enough to make a viewer wish it had been better.

Which Austen character would have enjoyed Murder By Decree? Colonel Brandon would certainly have admired Holmes for risking his life and reputation in a just cause; Frank Churchill would have understood keeping secrets out of self-preservation, and Mary Bennet may have drawn a useful lesson from the prostitutes’ conspiracy: that one false step can involve a woman in endless ruin.

And three degrees of Austen: Particularly easy here, since Donald Sutherland, who plays the psychic Robert Lees, was Mr. Bennet in the 2005 Pride and Prejudice.