Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine #7. Nicholas Briggs

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ id="ulink_3491020e-3736-5f6f-ba75-701ca36619be">A discussion of the next big-screen Moriarty—Hans Sonker’s Professor in 1962’s Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace—must wait a future column on Worst Sherlock Holmes Films Ever, one which, as editor Marvin Kaye has convinced me, the world is not yet prepared for.4 And while Laurence Olivier, from 1976’s The Seven Percent Solution, is the most noteworthy actor to play Moriarty on screen, Nicholas Meyer’s revisionist take on the character makes discussion of the character’s criminality moot.

      So, we’ll jump ahead to 1988, the next time the Professor was in a movie—the unsuccessful farce, Without A Clue. The usually-excellent Paul Freeman, still best-known for his René Belloq in Raiders of the Lost Ark, is in the same boat as Olivier to some extent. His character is merely a plot device in a movie where murder is played for laughs. In contrast to Zucco’s Moriarty, who’s present from the get-go, Freeman’s Moriarty doesn’t appear until a quarter of the movie has passed. His character gets his hands bloody, and delegates only the most menial chores to his unprepossessing henchmen. This places him in the vulnerable center of the action when the authorities close in on a counterfeiting operation. And it’s hard to imagine the author of The Dynamics of an Asteroid ending up in the same fix as does Freeman’s character at the end.

      The short-lived, promising, if flawed, Ian Richardson series of television films fell victim to the popularity of Jeremy Brett, but at the outset, Ian McKellen was mentioned as a possible Moriarty. The original concept for an incorporation of the Napoleon of Crime into the series led to one of the most offbeat, ostensibly, straight portrayals—that of Anthony Andrews in 1990’s TV film, Hand of a Murderer (also released as The Napoleon of Crime), written by Charles Edward Pogue, screenwriter for Richardson’s Hound of the Baskervilles and The Sign of Four. The movie opens in 1900, with Edward “The Equalizer” Woodward’s Holmes outdoing Rathbone’s. He’s not only gotten Moriarty convicted of murder, but has helped the Professor end up on the gallows (while apparently leaving the Professor’s organization unscathed.) But Holmes isn’t seen before Moriarty, which is what I believe to be a first. Of course, for the story to continue, the execution doesn’t come off, as the result of several contrivances, including Holmes’s absence, and Scotland Yard’s understaffing. Lestrade shuts the barn door after the Professor has fled, setting 300 officers on his trail, though they would have been better-deployed at the gallows.

      The script’s failings need not all be enumerated here, but Andrews, whose character is given a love-interest, plays the Professor as a smug, mugging-for-the-camera Victorian Joker as interpreted by Jack Nicholson a year earlier, rolling his eyes and chewing the scenery at every opportunity. Pogue does play at least unconscious homage to The Woman In Green twice, including a scene where Moriarty’s attractive henchwoman mesmerizes someone, and using the same there’s-an-ill-patient-in-need-of-help ploy to get Watson out of the way for a recreation of the Baker Street confrontation, here, alas, devoid of any impact or power. Although “The Final Problem” and The Valley of Fear do not speak to Moriarty’s displays of emotion, there is every reason to believe that in this area, too, he was Holmes’s counterpart.

      Thus, Andrews’s Moriarty’s loss of temper during an interrogation is out of character for the Canonical figure; Pogue has his Professor state that “sometimes, rage overwhelms me.” Having Moriarty also be a user of cocaine could have been a nice touch if the plot emphasized the ways in which he mirrors Holmes, but in the absence of such emphasis, it’s just a throwaway detail, as is the Professor’s use of disguise. The ending is as reliant on contrivances as the opening, with the Professor conveniently failing to post guards at his headquarters, an unintended parallel to the unwise police manpower allocation at the gallows.

      (DVD-viewing is not this movie’s friend, as the ability to freeze an image reveals that a newspaper report of Holmes’s death is buried in the middle of an article on Venezuela!)

      It is always good to end on an upbeat note, and fortunately, one is provided by the Granada TV series adaptation of “The Final Problem.” The script adheres closely to the Canon, and benefits from an addition to the previous aired episode, “The Red-Headed League.” That story ends with the revelation that Moriarty was behind John Clay’s scheme, providing a nice set-up for what was then considered the series’ finale. And the insertion of the Professor into other Canonical stories has a solid basis in the originals. One of the all-time best scholarly essays on the Canon, Robert Pattrick’s Moriarty Was There (fortunately reprinted in 2011’s The Grand Game Volume I), ingeniously picks up on the curious incident of a missing letter s to deduce Moriarty’s hand behind “The Red-Headed League,” and “The Five Orange Pips,” among others.

      The John Hawkesworth script also utilizes the idea first advanced by Edward F. Clark, Jr. in 1963’s “Study of an Untold Tale,” that Moriarty’s attempt to steal the Mona Lisa constituted one of the areas where Holmes foiled Moriarty.

      And that script was well-served by the standout cast, including the most-faithful-to-the-Canon Professor in the person of Eric Porter, who mastered the reptilian oscillation Holmes chillingly described to Watson. Visually, Porter is the closest fit yet to Sidney Paget’s rendition of the character. And his Baker Street battle of words with Holmes sets a standard that will be hard for future adaptations to match. None of the other five Napoleons of Crime covered here come close to Porter’s ability to convincingly portray a criminal mastermind whose wedding of sophisticated organization to villainy made him the adversary for the Great Detective.

      The Ritchie films follow the Granada series in one respect: having Moriarty as a shadowy, behind-the-scenes figure in the first film, before putting him front-and-center in Game of Shadows, adds menace and significance to the character. The way the Professor is portrayed there will renew the debate about where this series adheres to and departs from the spirit, and the details, of the original.

      _____________

      Lenny Picker, who also reviews and writes for Publishers Weekly, founded the Queens scion society, the Napoleons of Crime. Of his work for that society, it can be accurately said that he did little himself. He still hopes to someday read the great Holmes-Moriarty novel that fleshes out their pre-Final Problem duel. He can be reached via his wife’s email, <[email protected]>.

1 Squaring Watson’s reaction to Holmes’ account of Moriarty in “The Final Problem,” with his familiarity with the criminal in The Valley of Fear, has challenged Sherlockians for almost a century.

2 And in a more restrained manner than the movie ads—“The Struggle of Super-Minds in the Crime of the Century!”

3 Along the same lines, the script has Moriarty deduce from the presence of a spider’s web on a watering can that his servant has lied to him.

4 I don’t remember discouraging Lenny from writing such a column, but I have a poor memory. At any rate, I will certainly welcome such a column, should Lenny decide to write it for us.—MK

      INTERVIEW WiTH C. E. LAWRENCE

      The Darker Half of Carole Buggé

      Conducted by (Mrs) Martha Hudson

      I regret that for the past two issues, I have been unavailable to write my customary contributions to Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, but thanks to the wonders of modern communications, I have managed to interview another of this magazine’s frequent contributors, Miss Carole Buggé. (Forgive me for eschewing the use of ‘Ms,” which strikes СКАЧАТЬ