MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: SHERLOCK HOLMES FACES DEATH (1943)

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Sunday, June 1, 2008

SHERLOCK HOLMES FACES DEATH (1943)

This Conan Doyle sourced entry comes early in the Basil Rathbone & Nigel Bruce Universal series, but it’s one of those tales that gets stuck in a sanatorium & can’t get out again. The story's gimmick has us waiting for a clock tower to strike 13, signifying another murder, but with a cast of Universal contract sleepwalkers on board, how can you tell if they're alive or dead? It is nice to see character actor Halliwell Hobbes getting a chance to vary his usual butler routine with some extra sass, but this is not one of the more imaginative or creative Holmes pics from this series.

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A last thought before we go.

Well, enough from me. But before we sign off, here's a great quote from Emile Zola's L'OEUVRE (THE MASTERPIECE), which is about painting rather than the yet to be invented medium of film, but which points a fine critical eye toward the whole idea of art criticism. It's a good, if chilly, thought to keep in mind, especially when you surf the net.

"Has it ever struck you that posterity may not be the fair, impartial judge we like to think it is?

"Suppose the artist's paradise turned out to be as nonexistent as the Catholics, and future generations prove just as misguided as the present one and persisted in liking pretty pretty dabbling better than honest to goodness painting. There are some accepted masterpieces for which I myself wouldn't give a twopenny damn.

"Classical training has given us a wrong view of everything and forces us to acclaim as geniuses a lot of fellows who are no more than well-balanced, facile painters, while what we might really prefer is the work of more emancipated but less even artists known only to an initiated few. Immortality at present depends entirely on the average, middle-class mind and is reserved only for the names that have been most forcibly impressed upon us while we were still unable to defend ourselves...

"Perhaps that's the sort of thing that's best left unsaid. It's certainly the sort of thing that gives me the shudders!"- Emile Zola

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Sunday, June 1, 2008

SHERLOCK HOLMES FACES DEATH (1943)

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A last thought before we go.

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