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Sherlock Holmes. 1932. USA. Directed by William K. Howard. Screenplay by Bertram Millhauser, based on the play by William Gillette. With Clive Brook, Miriam Jordan, Ernest Torrence. 69 min.
Not the most reverent of Sherlock Holmes adaptations, but certainly the most stylish, William K. Howard’s 1932 film seems almost to anticipate James Bond by giving us a sardonic, action-oriented Holmes (Clive Brook), with a ravishing blonde fiancée (Miriam Jordan), a workshop full of high-tech gizmos, and a suitably outsized villain in the form of a Professor Moriarty played by the great silent film actor Ernest Torrence (Steamboat Bill, Jr.) in what would prove to be his last important role. Moriarty, too, is a thoroughly up to date figure, with a plan to impose an American-style protection racket on the pubs of London. Howard lets fly with his whole stylistic bag of tricks, including deep focus, whip pans, shock cuts, subjective point-of-view shots and sequences shot in silhouette. His unconventional approach to narrative structure is on brilliant display in a jailbreak sequence related in flashbacks. A pure delight from a master filmmaker at the height of his powers, here in an engagingly playful mood.
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