J A N E T I L I T Y

“Never, in the delirious dream of a disordered brain could anything more savage, more appalling, more hellish be conceived than that dark form and savage face which broke upon us out of the wall of fog.”

That passage illustrates one of the two challenges that account for the fact that (and not for want of trying) there has never been a satisfactory film or television version of The Hound of the Baskervilles; that is, the difficulty in staging the appearance of the hound and its attack on Sir Henry Baskerville. Too often the scene is an unconvincing tussle between the actor playing Sir Henry and a non-threatening and/or animated creature that calls up the scene in Ed Wood where Bela Lugosi is thrown in a pond with a rubber octopus and told to “Shake his legs around, look like he’s killin’ ya.”

The second challenge, of course, is dealing with the absence of Sherlock Holmes for most of the tale; do you manipulate the screenplay to pull Holmes into the narrative, or do you pattern the screenplay after Doyle’s text?

Another issue – which applies to any adaptation of a celebrated tale – is how far one can alter and abridge the text without misrepresenting the author’s work to the audience. And lastly, there is the matter of casting: there is probably no other fictional character whose physical appearance is more specific than that of Sherlock Holmes, and fidelity to the Canon demands that the actor is the appropriate physical type.

Basil Rathbone as Holmes

In considering a few of the two dozen or so attempts at The Hound, I’ll start with one that did a creditable job of recreating the attack: the 1939 film starring Basil Rathbone. This film was the first of the series, and the only one that was set in the Victorian era. Rathbone really was an excellent choice for Holmes; the same cannot be said for the casting of Nigel Bruce that touched off a veritable Nigel Brucification of the role in too many subsequent Sherlock Holmes films.

Otherwise, there were some decent casting choices here, and some unfavorable lapses: Mortimer is an aged man with a wife, who is a medium (this plot line is used in the 2002/Richard Roxborough Hound as well). There is no Mrs. Lyons, Holmes is pulled into Dartmoor disguised as a peddler, the Stapletons are step-siblings and the Barrymores were re-named the Barrymans, in deference to the Barrymore clan who were still prominent in the theatrical community. The finale is staged as one of those Golden Age murder mystery reveals with everyone piled into the drawing room; Stapleton makes a clean getaway, without the actor having to roll about in the Mire (“… like it’s killin ya.”) In the ‘70s, the print and the censored closing line (“Oh, Watson, the needle!”), were restored.

In 1982, after playing Doctor Who for several years, Tom Baker was cast as Holmes in a BBC miniseries of The Hound. He is a fine actor. He was also the wrong choice – distractingly wrong; nothing in face or figure called up the orthodox representation of Holmes.

Tom Baker as Holmes

In other respects, the casting choices did an excellent job of matching Doyle’s description, particularly Henry Baskerville (Nicholas Woodeson), Mortimer (Will Knightley), Laura Lyons (Caroline John), and Stapleton (Christopher Ravenscroft). Of all the Hounds, Alexander Baron’s screenplay is the most faithful adaptation in the pack. Baron, whose list of dramatizations includes the Scandal in Bohemia episode in the Jeremy Brett/Granada series and the 1981 Sense and Sensibility supports the conviction that Doyle’s narrative can hold up without the addition of mediums and séances, that his plot sequence was sound, and his dialogue was crisp and natural.

Jeremy Brett as Holmes

The 1988 Hound of the Baskervilles was part of the Jeremy Brett series. The series had the advantage of an excellent Holmes, though this particular episode, and many of the later ones, Brett’s failing health was obvious. Brett admitted to David Stuart Davies, author of Bending the Willow, that he was “terribly unwell” during the filming; he looks it, and to the detriment of the film. It is almost a relief, for viewers who had become so attached to Brett’s more dynamic turns, that Holmes is absent for much of the case. Brett, however, is not solely responsible for the weakness of the episode; the screenplay, as he succinctly expresses it in an interview with Davies was “underconceived”. There are few tales that offer so much screen potential as The Hound of the Baskervilles, but realizing its iconic moments must come at a price, and one wonders whether Brett’s diplomatic “underconceived” was code for “cheap”.

A final problem with these versions – and with most of them – is the age disparity between Watson and Henry Baskerville. In the book, it can be inferred that they are roughly of the same generation (Sir Henry, as well as Mortimer, are around 30) and parity and confidence between the London general practitioner and the wealthy heir seems more credible if there is no disparity in age – as gentlemen of roughly the same generation, they would be more likely, in my opinion, to form the sort of companionable bond that is forged at Baskerville hall.

A tale that captures the imagination, whether The Hound of the Baskervilles, Pride and Prejudice, Hamlet or The Three Musketeerswill always invite one more remake, one more throwdown to film the version that will have viewers hunting up the book, and readers applauding its fidelity. And then there’s….

William Shatner as Stapleton in a '70s Hound

Which Austen character would have enjoyed The Hound of the Baskervilles? Catherine Morland and Isabella Thorpe, of course, and Sir John Middleton may have delighted in the lively Christmas ball in the 2002/Richard Roxborough version.

And three degrees of Austen?
1939 Hound: Nigel Bruce appeared in Rebecca with Laurence Olivier, who was Darcy in the 1940 Pride and Prejudice.
1982 Hound: Tom Baker appeared in Luther with Judi Dench who was Lady Catherine in the 2005 Pride and Prejudice.
1988 Hound: Edward Hardwicke appeared in Love, Actually with Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Hugh Grant from the 1995 Sense and Sensibility; Colin Firth, from the 1995 Pride and Prejudice and Keira Knightley from the 2005 Pride and Prejudice.

Sherlock: A Case of Evil was a 2002 made-for-television film that pits a twentysomething Sherlock Holmes (James D’Arcy) against his nemesis, Moriarty and I will state from the outset that, of the few portrayals of a younger Sherlock Holmes, James D’Arcy’s is, by far, the best. Everything about his performance (including the “look” which I consider to be indispensable) is pitch-perfect.

James D'Arcy = Young Sherlock Holmes

A Case of Evil begins with the upshot of an investigation that has Holmes  pursuing Moriarty through London; there is a confrontation, Holmes shoots Moriarty and the body falls into the river. The effect of this – as Moriarty is known to be a master criminal – is to make an instant celebrity of the young detective and Holmes revels in fame, and it’s perks. Depicting Holmes as an attention-loving and arrogant young luminary (when a policeman asks for his surname, he replies. “Holmes.” [pause] “With an L”) is an interesting notion and, in its way, Canonical. Early in their Canonical relationship, Watson is irked by Holmes’s “bumptious style of conversation”, and looks upon the detective’s swift deductions as “brag and bounce”; when Holmes explains his chain of reasoning, he is “pleased at [Watson’s] evident surprise and admiration”.

We see a hint of the self-conceit in the earliest – chronologically, speaking – case, The Gloria Scott, when the college-age Holmes forms a friendship with fellow student who is “the very opposite to me in most respects”, and pays a visit to the young man and his father. Urged to demonstrate his deductive powers, Holmes leads with the observation that is guaranteed to shock and impress. In A Case of Evil, we have the same hint of swagger, and the same readiness to perform his deductive parlor tricks.

What Piers Ashworth’s screenplay posits (some odd casting and plotting choices notwithstanding*) is that, as a young man, Sherlock Holmes was engaging, vain, energetic, and emotionally susceptible. As the story plays out, we learn that Moriarty’s “death” and the case that precipitated it had been a ruse. In flashbacks, we see that Holmes has a personal grudge against Moriarty’s, and the resolution of the case costs a young woman, of whom Holmes has become quite fond, her life. The screenplay endorses the theory that the Sherlockian self-control, aloofness, detachment toward women are not fundamental traits, but the assumed, an armor against suffering. Even in the later cases, we often witness emotion and reason at odds; more than once, Watson comments on his friend’s vanity and reserve,  thoughtlessness and chivalry, his impatience and generosity. Like Jane Austen’s Mr. Bennet, Holmes is “so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice.”

 While the script does a very credible job in formulating a young Sherlock Holmes, it does tend to stray in other areas. Watson, here, is a rather unsophisticated police surgeon (and there seems to be a confusion about the era’s distinction between surgeon and doctor), to whom Holmes is introduced in the course of an investigation; yet, it has Holmes already living at Baker Street. (Sherlockians will recognize the inaccuracy). There is no sense that Watson is a man of worldly experience; there are, however, the glimpses of “pawky humor”, as when Holmes observed that there is “something abnormal about [a corpse’s] windpipe”, and Watson replies, “Yes. Normally, he’d be using it to breathe.”

Roger Morlidge as Watson

The humor extends to the script’s wry social jabs that offer “a distinct touch”. Holmes is hired by a wealthy opium importer whose clients are being killed off. Holmes – whose drugs of choice here are alcohol, including absinthe, and, of course, tobacco – despises both the client and drug use, an abhorrence that is explained in flashbacks. The gentleman rationalizes his occupation: opiates, he claims, are a “social necessity” for war veterans who have been introduced to morphine at battlefield hospitals and who continue to have “a taste for the drug” when they return.

Moriarty, who is at the root of the murders, scorns the importer for “building a criminal empire on a product that isn’t even illegal”, predicting that the real profits will come when drugs are prohibited, and that “They’re going to love it over there” (i.e., in America). Conversely, Watson, disparages Holmes’s use of tobacco, predicting that cigarettes will soon be banned by the government, while opium and cocaine, having medicinal uses, will always be legal.

Added to the interesting social landscape is the pulp reporter who dogs Holmes for headlines with all the tenacity of a paparazzo, shrugging off Lestrade’s challenge to his accuracy with, “We can always print a retraction next week.” Young Holmes is an assiduous collector of his own press clippings until the account assembled in his scrapbook becomes too personal and painful a record. Then, he decides, “I’d rather trust posterity to that diary of yours, Watson.”

*Re: the odd casting choices. Vincent D’Onofrio is Moriarty. Richard E. Grant (who was always on my Sherlock shortlist) is Mycroft. Perhaps they should have considered reversing the roles?

Vincent D'Onofrio as Moriarty

Richard E. Grant as Mycroft

And which Austen character would have enjoyed A Case of Evil? It is hard to believe that any of the young ladies of high sensibility – Catherine Morland, Marianne Dashwood, Emma Woodhouse, Maria and Julia Bertram, the Musgrove sisters or even the frivolous Charlotte Palmer – could resist this handsome, dashing version of Sherlock Holmes, and perhaps Jane herself who, in one of her letters, writes of having “the dignity of dropping out my mother’s Laudanum” would have wondered at Moriarty’s notion that the such a common remedy would ever be made illegal.

 And three degrees of Austen? James D’Arcy had the starring role in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (2001) with Tom Hollander, who was Mr. Collins in the 2005 Pride and Prejudice.