LITERAL REMAINS

 When I learned last year there was to be a big screen Sherlock Holmes movie, I was excited.  When I learned Robert Downey Jr. was going to play Holmes and Jude Law was to be Dr. Watson, I thought I was reading a type-o.  That couldn’t really be correct, could it?  But, yeah, it was.  Nothing against Downey Jr., I like him, he’s a great actor.  But Holmes?  Then I read that director Guy Ritchie, Madonna’s ex-husband (they are divorced, aren’t they, I don’t keep up with these things), wanted to present a Sherlock Holmes as he imagined him.  I admit, I got a little nervous right there.  I still am, really.

Like a lot of you, I’ve watched the trailer for the upcoming film.  When I first found it I almost peed my pants.  Don’t judge me.  The movie looks interesting enough, especially for it to be an original work, “inspired” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories, and I believe it’s based on a graphic novel or something (there’s a lot of things I don’t keep up with).  There’s seems to be a good number of fights involved in the story, an explosion, some scantily clad Rachel McAdams (?).  Not to say that these things have no place in Sherlock Holmes story; Holmes was an excellent fighter, skilled with weapons.  Not much of a ladies’ man, though, if I remember correctly.  McAdams will be playing Irene Adler.  Adler, from the story “A Scandal In Bohemia”, was the only woman who ever shivered Sherlock’s timbers.  I’m eager to see this movie, but I’m just afraid this will be another case of Hollywood fodder.  I just know they’re going to screw it up and make a steaming pile of a movie to please the kids at the mall.

It’s going to be a long wait for Christmas Day.

Until then, luckily, there are plenty of Sherlock Holmes movies and television shows to get us by and wile away the scant six months before we’re able to judge how good Robert Downey Jr. will be as the greatest detective of all time.  Holmes is one of the most portrayed characters of all time.  From Roger Moore (one of my favorite Bonds, so kill me) to John Cleese to Tom Baker (the best Doctor Who, and you can’t argue with that, I won’t hear of it), there have been a lot of actors to wear a deerstalker and puff on a calabash pipe.  There was even a Soviet television series that starred Vasily Livanov as Holmes and Vitaly Solomin as Dr. Watson.  I don’t know who they are either, I’ve never heard of them, I just thought it was interesting.

One of my favorite adaptations is 1959′s The Hound of the Baskervilles.  It stars Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, and was directed by the great Terence Fisher for Hammer Films.  It was intended to be the first of a planned series of Holmes adaptations but, as with a lot of these things, audiences in 1959 didn’t much care for a Hammer movie without monsters, horror, and all that.  So, the plans were scrapped.  At least we’re left with this one gem, though, and it is a great movie.  Beautifully shot and just the right kind of atmosphere for a rainy day.

Peter Cushing would go on to play Holmes yet again in a television series for the BBC in the late sixties.  And of course there was Basil Rathbone who played Holmes in the thirties and forties in fourteen different films, some good, some not so excellent.  But, for me, and I’m sure I’m not alone in this, the only actor to fully bring the character to life was Jeremy Brett.

For me, Jeremy Brett, who passed away in 1995, will always be Sherlock Holmes.  The two are intertwined in my mind.  I didn’t fully discover the detective until I began watching The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes on the PBS program Mystery!back in the late eighties/early nineties.  Jeremy Brett was a great actor who could play anything and, aside from Granada Television’s Holmes series, is probably best remembered for the role of Freddy in the film My Fair Lady.  Brett’s depiction, for all its eccentricities, felt real.  For me, there will never be another Sherlock Holmes like Jeremy Brett’s portrayal.  Robert Downey Jr. can try, and God bless him for it, but those are shoes that will remain unfilled.