Sherlock Holmes

I had looked forward to having John Barrymore's SHERLOCK HOLMES on DVD for quite some time. I had seen the movie before but only in a wretched public domain VHS which was so dark that most of the film was hard to make out. The first half is made up of original material that sets the stage for the second half which is the William Gillette play. Holmes and Watson begin as college students at Cambridge which leads to his first encounter with Moriarty. The scene is clever and memorable.

It's a shame the rest of the movie can't match it. Although atmospherically lit, the camerawork is rather static and the direction is often ponderous. To be fair, this restoration by the George Eastman House is 24 minutes shorter than the original and this could be a case of where the missing footage makes it seem longer. There are obvious gaps and the film just doesn't flow right.

The biggest problem with this release as far as I'm concerned is the use of Ben Model's virtual organ score. Model is a fine musician who has enhanced many a silent film but this is a movie that badly needs an orchestral score to cover its deficiencies. This score, while well played and well recorded, failed to keep my interest. Still the movie is definitely worth having for the performances alone.

In addition to Barrymore you get to see early turns by William Powell (his first movie), Roland Young (as Dr. Watson), Carole Dempster (away from D. W. Griffith), Hedda Hopper before she became a columnist, and Gustav von Seyffertitz as the ideal Moriarty. The actual London locations also enhance the proceedings. The Blu-ray edition is slightly better and is the way to go for the best results regarding this title...For more reviews visit The Capsule Critic.

First off I'm not a Sherlock Holmes expert so I'll leave it at that and just comment on the film for what it is, not what it isn't. I have however watched episodes of the Jeremy Brett series on A&E and they're wonderful. For those who always say John Barrymore is a ham, this film counters that argument somewhat as he displays a terrific gamut of underplaying. Not boring but decidedly underplaying. Director Al Parker had to talk Barrymore into doing the picture so the film is more of Parker's labor-of-love than Barrymore's. No 1922 print of the movie survived through the decades as a release print would give evidence of a working continuity and of how this film unraveled to 1922 audiences. Only the actual camera negative survived of this film in a dismantled state. Kudos to Kevin Brownlow for doing a masterful job of re-assembling the negative to where it could be printed for viewing. What Brownlow has edited is 'probably' not too far off from the original release prints. The source for this film is similar, in procurring, the source for Barrymore's 1920 Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde in that the story comes from a great author, adapted to a stage play, then the play is used as a source for the film. Having seen three of Al Parker's films 'Eyes of Youth'(1919), 'Sherlock Holmes'(1922) & 'The Black Pirate'(1926), I can say that his directing style stays the same in all three pictures. Parker is only going to give the audience: closeup, medium shot & long shot. Sometimes faint moving camera ie the mock street fight, car leaving down the street. Parker is not going to do as King Vidor or Alan Crosland would do that is experiment in panning camera or tracking shot or zoom. That would've livened up this movie some what. This movie however follows the Griffith school of directing that is lots of stationery camera action in frame and title cards, much like other movies of 1922. J. Roy Hunt's photography is quite low like that of Milton Moore's in 'He Who Gets Slapped'(1924). Perhaps this was to signify the gloomy nature of the story. Original prints were probably tinted like many Goldwyn features of this period. This story should've been left in the 1890s and the movie a period piece rather than update the story to 1922. Both Carol Dempster & Hedda Hopper's characters wear contemporary clothing, Dempster the traditional patterned dresses that are in one quick sequence quite diaphanous. Hopper gets to dress fashionably, hats & all, 1922 style as one of her dresses is loose fitting & comfortable and looks like it was designed by Coco Chanel(parts of this film WERE made in Europe ie: Switzerland & England). William Powell & Roland Young(as Dr Watson) make their film debuts here. Powell later recalled that in 1936 when Barrymore was having trouble auditioning for MGM's 'Romeo & Juliet' and couldn't remember his lines, MGM tapped Powell to replace him. Powell countered that he did not have the heart to replace Barrymore as it was Barrymore who had given him his start in movies in 'Sherlock Holmes'. Louis Wolheim, Reginald Denny and David Torrence round out supporting roles.

Here's another old movie where the distance from the "original" events (here the writing of the stories) is closer to the movie than the movie is from us. It makes it even odder that the era of the story is shifted to the era of the movie, with cars and phones.

I'll watch any old detective story. Anything along these lines until 1940 or so was important to the development of narrative, no matter how bad. This one is no masterpiece; the plot is muddled, but the fact that the ending is missing is almost better because you can imagine something better than what the filmmaker can. We might even have done away with the latter half of the thing.

But there is one interesting thing: the legacy of the actors. The Barrymore gestures of Holmes are the basis for the silent-filmlike excess of Jeremy Brett. You can see William Powell, the famous star of the Thin Man series, which reinvented the detective film genre. And you can watch Watson played by the man who would presage noir with "Topper." Both in their first film.

And I suppose there's some mild pleasure in seeing obsolete visions of female beauty.

The Holmes here does no detecting except for deducing that Watson has moved his dressingtable.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

Answer: Largely disinterested acting from its star, an almost actionless script, a plodding pace, verbose inter-titles, and mostly flat, uninvolving direction.

Despite negative contemporary reviews (including an excellent summation of everything that's wrong with the movie in The New York Times), this vanished version of Holmes with its fantastic cast line-up (including the movie debuts of Powell and Young) has long intrigued both film and Sherlock buffs worldwide. So imagine the joy when about 600 rolls of work print offcuts (amounting in all to about 4,000 feet) were found! These were handed to Kevin Brownlow who, with the aid of Albert Parker himself, painstakingly re-assembled the movie over a period of six months. George Eastman House then came to the rescue when the inter-titles were found in their vaults.

The composite reconstructed movie now runs about 109 minutes. There is still footage missing, but that doesn't matter a great deal as, alas, the photoplay is boring enough as it is.

Admittedly, it has its moments: Von Seyffertitz is a marvelous presence. I also enjoyed Roland Young's Watson and Powell's chat with Barrymore in the taxi. And unlike other viewers, I thought Miss Dempster looked quite charming in this non-Griffith outing. And even below-par Barrymore did provide a great moment at the climax for those hardy viewers like myself who persisted right to the end.

But the movie is full of talk. Talk, talk, talk! That's mostly all the characters do in this tediously paced, almost actionless movie. After 80 minutes or so, I just got so bored reading the inter-titles, I gave up. Some of them were too hard to decipher anyway.

Which brings me to the next problem. Labs take no care in printing up positives which are solely to be employed for negative cutting, so 90% of the movie is far too dark. Sometimes you can hardly see what's going on. True, some if it looks attractive and you say to yourself, "Wow! Film noir lighting in 1922!" But this is not the way it was presented to original movie audiences.

I get that this is not one of the all time best silent movies however this is a very good representation of the burgeoning art of filmmaking. The director is trying to make a large film using pieces of the entire Holmes catalog. Does he make an Oscar winner? Well, since the Oscars weren't created when this movie was made I guess we will never know.

Still, this is an amazing piece of history that you should watch for what it is, a restoration. To even discuss the technical aspects of lighting etc, is just pure silliness, it's 1922 for goodness sake! I love Holmes, I love Barrymore, I love this movie. It's history. It's where we came from, watch it in that light and you will enjoy it so much more.