The Hound of the Baskervilles
Critique • Quotes • At the movies
Moriarty (Georege Zucco) is confronted by Holmes (Basil Rathbone) in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
Warming up to Sherlock
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939): Film, 81 minutes; director Alfred L. Werker; writer Edwin Blum, William A. Drake; featuring Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Ida Lupino, George Zucco
The second of the two Twentieth-Century Fox films featuring Arthur Conan Doyle's consulting detective actually has nothing to do with Doyle's story collection identically titled The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Rather, it is based on the 1899 William Gillette play.
It opens with Moriarty being acquitted of murder, as Holmes rushes into court too late with evidence that would have convicted him. Moriarty then proceeds to present Homes two simultaneous challenges: solve a series of murders that threatens to take the life of a young heiress (Ida Lupino) and prevent the theft of the British Crown jewels.
The two leads are appealing in the roles, Rathbone adding warm touches to the icily rational detective and Bruce providing humorous relief as his none-too-bright but good-hearted colleague.
The opening credits offer the conceit that what follows is Holmes's own memoir concerning the events to follow. This may annoy Doyle fans, but it is just as well since we cannot imagine Bruce's Watson being the literate and insightful recorder of his friend's exploits.
Scene from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes with Rathbone, Bruce and Ida Lupino.
Moriarty is played by veteran British actor George Zucco as every bit a cultured, professorial figure, complete with goatee. His rivalry with Holmes is mainly an intellectual one, like a chess game, which he very nearly wins.
Despite giving the film a big production, the studio apparently had little faith in the franchise, releasing The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes with faint fanfare and cancelling planned future episodes.
Yet this is the instalment showing up most often on television—perhaps not as darkly dramatic as The Hound of the Baskervilles, but popular as one of the best produced and involving Holmes movies of that period.
— Eric
