On a arrêté Sherlock Holmes

Hans Albers and Heinz Rühmann stop a train and board it. Albers is wearing a checked coat and a deerstalker, and Rühmann is carrying a violin case. They are recognized by the train's staff as Sherlock Holmes and Watson, though they insist on being called Flint and MacPherson. A couple of suspicious characters flee the train, leaving their baggage. The two men interrogate two sisters, Marieluise Claudius and Hansi Knoteck, who think they are thieves, but the men leave their compartment. The men get off in town and head over to a grand hotel, discussing the techniques of their impostures. They are recognized as Holmes & Watson. When the trunks abandoned by the fleeing men arrive as their trunks, they discover hundreds of thousands of francs, which they hide. They are summoned to police headquarters, where they are asked to investigate the theft of rare stamps. They proceed to do so with apparent confidence. Who are they? Are they tricksters attempting to mulct people seeking the help of the Great Detective? Just taking advantage of credulity for free room and board? Why do they go ahead with the investigations, acting as if they know what they are doing, even though they are clearly not Homes and Watson.

It's fast-paced, it's fun, and it's a little bit mysterious too, rolling right along under the direction of Karl Hartl, with a plot that suggests Emil and the Detectives. Clearly not every German movie in 1937 was intended as propaganda. Some were intended to please an audience looking for a good time, and this is one of them.

Hans Albers & Heinz Rühmann are at their very best in this hugely entertaining film. Albers & Rühmann pretend to be the famous duo Holmes & Dr. Watson and the police, the gangsters and the girls believe them beyond any doubt. The direction is so smooth and has the best of comic timing as any Lubitsch film might have. Even today, the film has not lost it's tempo, witt and adventures style. Whoever thinks, German film makers only made propaganda pictures during the dictatorship, are dead wrong. Try to get a VHS copy, sit back and be drawn into the hillarious adventures of THE MAN WHO WAS SHERLOCK HOLMES.

From the beginning to the end, this is an absolutely enjoyable film. Not only thrilling and offering more than one good mystery to solve, and full of surprises from the first sequences to the very end, but also played by both Albers and Rühman with a good-humored touch that suits them perfectly and adds to this new look upon Holmes and Watson. Albers had been a comedian before his detective role in Oiseaux de nuit (1930) brought him movie fame, and was also a good singer with an easy style; and Rühman was known for these kind of roles and was an established comedian. Yet this is not strictly a comedy, but a merry detective mystery story.

The story begins at night, when two men with a strange resemblance to Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson stop a train and board it in a hurry. Word quickly spreads amongst the staff and passengers, to a couple of crook´s despair. Their two compartment neighbours, orphaned sisters in their way to receive an inheritance, are to be met again by our not so disinterested heroes, adding a romantinc touch. And if Marieluise Claudius and Hansi Knoteck appear at first as simple charming young girls, their importance in the development of the events to come is more than it seems. When our heroes reach Brussels they soon get involved in trying to solve the robbery of the valuable Mauritius stamps at the World Exhibition. So don´t miss a detail and enjoy what´s coming.

Only a couple of weak points : even if the Sidney Paget drawings decorating the opening credits become amazingly tuned into Albers´ image in the train magazine, Holmes is lean and angled, by no means that rugby-built type of man; and Watson is not at all a secondary reticent man but a true companion that has his own mind and intelligence, something that at least can be occasionally noticed in this film (so Rühman was luckier than Nigel Bruce). But that, of course, is part of the originality of this story. Conan Doyle, on his side, had nothing to do with the gaudy tipsy innkeeper type, being a serious-looking Scottish who instilled his characters with intelligence and subtle irony. Lacking this introverted sharpness both Arthur Wontner and Jeremy Brett amply displayed, Albers has his own strong personality that brings the character into his own without loosing his principles, nor the ones of his role for that matter.

This is a film made in pre-war Germany, when things were getting difficult for a man (Albers) líving with the daughter of a Jewish actor and playwright and Rühman about to divorce his Jewish wife. It is a goal of the entire film crew that this is not noticed at all, offering us a highly entertaining, witty and impeccably timed story that has retained its qualities through the years.

What a fabulous movie this is. The absence of anti-English propoganda is no doubt due to the fact that the two countries were not yet at war. Some might point a finger at the catchy number of Hans Sommer 'Yes, gentlemen, the world belongs to us' but that is open to interpretation and is ironically prophetic only in retrospect. This film apparently landed UFA in all sorts of trouble with the executors of the Conan Doyle Estate but the court eventually found in UFA's favour after years of legal wrangling.

Hans Albers as Morris Flynn and Heinz Ruemann as Macky McPherson bounce off each other wonderfully and they are ably supported by Marieluise Claudius who died tragically at the age of 29 and Hansi Knoteck who went on until the age of 98. Fascinating also is Hilde Weissner whose film appearances were rare, playing a crook. The final courtroom scene is magnfiicent, climaxing in the identity of the 'laughing man' being revealed.

The careers of both Albers and Ruemann continued unabated after the war and Ruemann's popularity survived his perceived chumminess with Hitler.

Karl Hartl who had worked twice before with Albers on more weighty material never allows the tempo to slacken and delivers a gloriously entertaining film. Zehn von Zehn!