Sherlock Holmes contre Moriarty

Twenty years after solving the famous 'Hound of the Baskervilles' case, Sherlock Holmes is invited to return to Baskerville Hall to take a holiday. At Watson's urging he accepts and the pair head to the West Country. They haven't been long when a stable boy working for a local race horse owner is found murdered and the prize horse, Silver Blaze, is missing. Following tracks onto the moor the horse's trainer is found dead... presumed murdered. Holmes soon begins to suspect that his arch nemesis Professor Moriarty is behind the events.

While this is far from the best Sherlock Holmes mystery it is still rather fun. Certain aspects of the story are fairly easy to figure out, such as who actually stole the horse, but others are less obvious. Arthur Wonter does a solid job as Holmes and Ian Fleming is a decent Watson. Lyn Harding isn't bad Professor Moriarty although the case does seem a little trivial for such a master criminal. Given the fact that it is over eighty years old it isn't surprising that it shows its age somewhat; but that shouldn't put anybody off. It might not be a must see but if you are a fan of inter-war cinema it passes seventy minutes nicely enough.

This is the second Arthur Wontner-Sherlock Holmes movie I saw on a two-sided dollar DVD (The first was The Sign of Four). Silver Blaze has Holmes and Watson (Ian Fleming, no not THAT one!) visiting the Baskerville house to spend a little holiday there. The title character is a horse that a bookie doesn't want to win since he'll lose his shirt if that horse finishes first. Holmes' nemesis Prof. Moriarty (Lyn Harding), for a certain amount, will make sure that won't happen. A bit talky for my tastes until the end when Watson gets...Well, I'll just leave it to anyone who reads this to seek this movie out. The print I saw was a little better looking than The Sign of Four though it still could have used some improvements. Well worth seeing for any Holmes fans or even those who love '30s British pictures.

Although Arthur Wontner is little remembered today, in his time he was considered by many to have been the best of those who had portrayed Sherlock Holmes on screen. "Silver Blaze", the last of the Holmes series that starred Wontner, is a solid feature that takes the Doyle story of the same name and adds to it some of the characters and elements from the other Holmes stories.

The strength of Wontner's performance is that he looks very convincing as the Holmes of literature, and he also looks very much at home in the Victorian era settings. While his portrayal of Holmes lacks the sharpness and forcefulness of Basil Rathbone or Jeremy Brett, Wontner is certainly adequate in the challenging role of the great detective. He does well here despite the low-budget look to everything else.

"Silver Blaze" is also of interest in adding Moriarty, Lestrade, and the Baskervilles to the original story. As Moriarty, Lyn Harding has some screen presence, but he doesn't really make Moriarty seem like the brilliant strategist that you expect him to be - here he is more like a tough guy whom you wouldn't want to cross. His role is mainly used to create some extra suspense sequences. The central mystery itself is an interesting one, with some of the unusual details that you hope for in a Holmes story. Overall, this is a solid if unspectacular feature.

Dedicated Sherlockians on both sides of the Atlantic used to regard Arthur Wontner as the definitive Holmes. Partly this was reaction against the Basil Rathbone films, with their serial-style WWII plots and the portrait of Watson as a lovably bumbling idiot; Rathbone was admired but the films were blasphemy. By comparison, Wontner's Holmes was visually the absolute picture of the Sidney Paget illustrations that accompanied the original stories in The Strand, and at least some of the six films (not all of which survive) were faithful adaptations of notable Holmes stories not otherwise filmed.

Then... along came Jeremy Brett (also the picture of the Paget illustrations), and it had to be admitted that the Wontner films were so cheaply made that they really had nothing going for them besides Wontner, and lacked the polish and entertainment value of even the Universal Bs in the Rathbone series. Next to Brett, also, Wontner's Holmes is if anything too genial; he lacks the suffer-no-fools snappishness that is an essential part of Holmes' character. (That's especially odd considering that that's exactly the sort of character Wontner plays in his best-known role outside this series, as an acerbic ambassador in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.) Silver Blaze (a short story padded out much like the Brett series episodes would be) is probably the best of the bunch, and remains watchable but, now, a minor chapter in the saga of Holmes on film next to better movies starring Holmeses such as Basil Rathbone, Robert Stephens, Christopher Plummer, Ian Richardson and, best of all, Jeremy Brett.

Am a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes and get a lot of enjoyment out of Arthur Conan Doyle's stories. Also love Basil Rathbone's and especially Jeremy Brett's interpretations to death. So would naturally see any Sherlock Holmes adaptation that comes my way, regardless of its reception.

Furthermore, interest in seeing early films based on Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories and wanting to see as many adaptations of any Sherlock Holmes stories as possible sparked my interest in seeing 'Silver Blaze', part (the last in fact) of the series of film with Arthur Wontner. Would also see anything that has Holmes encountering his arch-nemesis Professor Moriaty.

'Silver Blaze', not just a straight adaptation of just this particular story, but with elements of other Holmes stories (with the interesting inclusion of Moriaty and the Baskervilles) too, is very much worthwhile. Not one of the best Sherlock Holmes adaptations certainly, the best of the Jeremy Brett adaptations and films of Basil Rathone fit under this category. It's also not among the worst, being much better than any of the Matt Frewer films (particularly 'The Sign of Four') and the abominable Peter Cook 'The Hound of the Baskervilles'.

It's not perfect. The sound quality is less than great, while some of the pace could have been tighter, especially at the start as it does take too long to get going.

Some of the dialogue unnecessarily rambles a bit in a particularly talky outing in the Wontner Holmes films, and the low budget limitations do show in the production values (other than some nice shots the film looks pretty cheap, the cheapest looking of the Wontner Holmes films).

However, there are some nice interesting shots that stop the film from looking completely cheap. The writing generally is thought-provoking, Holmes' deductions and crime solving are a huge part of the fun as well as very true in detail and spirit to Conan Doyle's writing, the mystery elements are intact, there are moments of suspense and the story is intriguing and not hard to follow.

Arthur Wontner may technically have been too old for Holmes but he did not look too old and his portrayal is on the money, handling the personality and mannerisms of the character spot on without over-doing or under-playing. Ian Fleming is a charming, loyal, intelligent and amusing Watson, with nice chemistry between him and Wontner, really liked his inferior attempts at deduction. The support is competent without being outstanding or as memorable, Lyn Harding's Moriaty comes off best.

Overall, worth watching and decently solid if not great. 6/10 Bethany Cox