Movie Catch Up

As reported earlier, there are two Sherlock Holmes features and two silent films that we have recently viewed. The Holmes movies are showing on Prime, and were part of a planned series that never got further than these two offerings.  The Sign of Four is from 1983 and stars Ian Richardson and David Healy as the dynamic duo.  They both seem effective, and seemed chosen to resemble Rathbone and his Watson.  But Healy doesn't play the fool nearly as overboard as Nigel Bruce, and the paring works well here.  The story has a few discrepancies with the Homes canon, but not enough to raise eyebrows very high at all.  There are a few good scenes, and a few bad ones.  The Andaman native aspect is overplayed, and the two brothers who inherit a treasure from their father (but don't know where it is) are nothing too special.  The best scene is an extended one with Toby leading the chase as he sniffs out the creosote, with Holmes and Watson catching up on the case details as they go.  Worth a look for Holmes fans.

 

Showing on Prime Video. 

 

The same Holmes and Watson are back in the 1983 Hound of the Baskervilles.  This is one of those stories that fans of Holmes know down to the last detail.  Again we have a pretty decent attempt at bringing the tale to life, though there are a few changes once again.  Brian Blessed (over) plays the red herring.  In fact, everyone seems suspicious in this version and if you didn't know who the bad guy was you might never guess.  Stapleton is well played by Nicholas Clay (who also appears in the Brett series, as the doctor in The Resident Patient) (and Lancelot in Boorman's Excalibur).  Again this version is worth watching.  Holmes smiles and laughs a lot, and his sense of humour makes him seem a bit more human than many other players of the character.  Well worth watching, and reading, of course.  One of the best mystery stories ever written.

 

Now showing on Prime Video. 

 

Next were two very different silent films that we watched on Criterion.  Here is the channel's blurb:

 

WITHIN OUR GATES (1920) is the earliest surviving feature film by an African American director. It was Oscar Micheaux’s second film (after 1919’s THE HOMESTEADER, now lost), centering on an idealistic young woman named Sylvia Landry (Evelyn Preer, one of the first great stars of the race film) who attempts to raise money for an elementary school for black children. In the course of navigating the racial politics of both the black and white communities, Sylvia’s past is revealed in a series of flashbacks that contain the film’s most notorious sequence: the lynching of her parents by a white mob. Micheaux’s staging of the scene is startling in its bluntness and speaks volumes about the director’s fearlessness and willingness to address taboo subject matter. The film touches upon other themes that would recur throughout the controversial filmmaker’s career, such as the promise of rural life vs. the corrupting influence of the city, and the use of religion as a means of misleading the black community. 

 

Of interest mainly to film historians, especially of early Black American cinema, it features overacting and repetitive scenes.  It does have its chilling moments, however, and does not spare the Black man in its condemnation, even though it is the whites who are at the heart of this tragedy.

 

Streaming on Criterion. 

 

Lastly comes a very intense film from Sweden, starring and directed by Victor Sjostrom.  The Phantom Carriage is from 1921 and is quite sophisticated for its time.  A young Salvation army woman tries to save the soul of a local villain, but he is having none of it.  The carriage in question is driven by Death's servant, who must spend one year collecting bodies from where they died.  There are many striking scenes, including a drowning victim picked up by the carriage in the ocean moments after he dies.  More intense than A Christmas Carol, there is a resemblance between the two films in theme and in its use of ghosts and past events to get its point across.  Recommended.  Bergman was heavily influenced by this film, and the actor/director of it stars in the leading role in Bergman's Wild Strawberries.

 

Mapman Mike