This part of the series could be called the perfect adaptation of the “Union of the Reds”.
Holmes and Watson are very good, Jabez Wilson is excellent, Duncan Ross is beyond praise, Johnson is exactly what he should be, and Merriweather is also unquestionable.
In addition, the classic cast of actors contributes to the quality of the film adaptation of this story, since the series is British.
The only drawback would be that the hair color of Duncan Ross, by no means as red as the author says.
However, the creators of the series were not satisfied with the fruit of the imagination of the great writer.
This is related to the image of John Clay.
John Clay is known to be one of Holmes' most challenging and brilliant opponents. This category of characters is very interesting because:
1. There are very few brilliant and complex opponents of Holmes.
2. This order of the chosen can be divided into two subspecies: the complexity, brilliance and grandeur of some is stated by Holmes himself, but his words are practically not supported by the description of the subtlety and sophistication of their crimes or the struggle against it. Most of the clever opponents of Holmes belong to this subspecies: Milverton, Moran, Baron Gruner, Irene Adler, von Bork. And Baron Mopertuis with his “colossal fraud” is just a reference to justify the nervous exhaustion of a great man. The second subspecies are opponents whose complexity is shown to the reader in the case. There are even fewer of them: Jack Stapleton, Dr. Roylott and the same John Clay. However, the sophistication of the doctor’s crime is negated by the writer’s giant mistake. It is to the “Motley Ribbon” that Chandler’s words apply: “Conan Doyle sometimes made a mistake so that it completely killed the meaning of some of his stories...”
Thus, John Clay is a truly rare case in Sherlockian: a talented criminal whose talent stems from the crime shown by the author.
In the film adaptation of the Red League, there is nothing less than the destruction of the unique status of the Duke’s grandson, due to the introduction of the most complex and brilliant Hills opponent, Professor Moriarty. In other words, the creators, being within the framework of the author's plot, made an attempt to somehow show the genius of the professor in the case. For, as we know, Moriarty Conan Doyle is only the largest representative of the first subspecies of the great Hills opponents. His criminal genius is not revealed by the author.
In the film, Clay becomes an application, and Moriarty is filled with content.
This is the main drawback of the film. The invention of a talented criminal is attributed to a criminal of genius and looks, therefore, rather small. The original source has not changed. And Holmes very quickly unravels the combination of now not just outstanding, but its largest antagonist. We can say that the way chosen by the creators to show the brain of a genius villain led to a rather dubious result. John Clay's fantasy is too petty for "Napoleon of the Underworld."
However, it should be noted that Eric Porter’s Moriarty is so good that his failure may suggest that he simply did not use all his intellectual power to deceive the “not-too-smart depository owner.”
Actually, my post is a post of surprise, because almost nowhere I found critical reviews about our Holmes and almost nowhere praised about the English film adaptation. I discovered this series about three years ago and since then I love it tenderly and reverently, I am happy to review and know exactly what a true movie should be.
The best Holmes of all time is not English. Indeed, it is customary for us to blindly admire Livanov, because the Queen herself recognized him as the best. Only his Holmes and not Holmes at all. Phlegmatic, emotionally poor, dry, monotonous character, in no way comparable to the canon, with one line ' Elementary, Watson!' and one facial expression all the way. However, in RuNet, for unclear and not very fair reasons, he is put on his head above the really brilliant and much more complete English film adaptation with Jeremy Brett.
English Holmes is Holmes to the bone. Refined, sharp, capricious, graceful mind, spark in the eyes, half-smirks-half smiles, a thousand shades of emotions, almost childlike joy from another puzzle for the mind and experiments with reagents, beautiful humor, beautiful, lively face. Holmes Livanova - predictable, one-sided and boring, Holmes Bretta - surprises and surprises himself, he is sharp and restrained with people, temperamental and reckless in friendship, fervent and passionate in work. Mr. Livanov somewhere here criticized Cumberbatch and reminded the whole civilized world, they say, he is the only Big Hero, although neither Brett nor Basil Rathbone rude hero clearly never heard. All right. They have not lost their ignorance.
- Found it! I found it! he shouted gleefully, rushing towards us with a test tube in his hands. I finally found a reagent that is precipitated only by hemoglobin and nothing else! If he had found the gold placers, his face probably wouldn't have shone with such delight.
. . .
- Well, that's nothing, he quit, grinning. - Hemoglobin is another matter. Do you understand the importance of my discovery?
- How a chemical reaction is, of course, interesting, but practically ...
- Oh, my God, this is the most practically important discovery for forensic medicine in decades. Don't you realize that this makes it possible to accurately identify blood spots? Come here, come here! In the heat of impatience, he grabbed me by the sleeve and dragged me to his desk.
. . .
- Ha, ha! He clapped his hands, shining with joy, like a child who got a new toy. What do you think about that?
- It seems to be some very strong reagent, I noticed.
- Wonderful! Wonderful!
A jubilant, enthusiastic, violently emotional type, who does not hide his joy even from a stranger whom he sees for the first time in his life. What's Livanov doing? The text is the same, but with what face? With the lecturer's face, empty, playful. A voice that expresses nothing, much less delight. That's the whole movie. Yes, it looks good and the timbre is recognizable. But that's it. All ' Englishness' in the series Maslennikov is sucked out of the finger, all mannerions are hypertrophied and distorted, censorship distorts the most frank and tragic moments of the character's essence. And his incompatibility? Why not get along with Livanov? Absolute, calm as a boa, phlegmatic. He smokes in the middle of the night and that’s it.
And here's Doyle:
- Holmes is too obsessed with science - it already borders on heartlessness. I can easily imagine him sprinkling a small dose of some newly discovered plant alkaloid to his friend, not out of malice, of course, but out of curiosity, in order to have a clear idea of its action. However, we must give him justice, I am sure that he will also willingly give this injection to himself. He has a passion for accurate and reliable knowledge.
- Well, that's not bad.
- Yes, but you can go to extremes. If it comes to the fact that the corpses in the anatomy he beats with a stick, agree that it looks rather strange.
- Does he beat corpses?
- Yes, to see if bruises can appear after death. I've seen it with my own eyes.
Can you imagine Vasily Borisovich beating corpses in anatomy with a stick?! No way! Because his Holmes is adapted for children (for Soviet children, I note!) and is censored hand and foot. This is Carlson, this is Ivan Germogenovich Enotov from 'Karika and Vali' but this is not Holmes! For the Union and Russia, of course, it is an event. And the movies are good, but Holmes can't be tied, held, stopped, halved. I want a grown-up Holmes, not a baby Holmes, real, not fake. I am not interested in a clever detective, not a castrated character, but in the depth of the character with all its twists and imperfections.
Brett is striking in this role, his unparalleled laughter, a sizzling look and masterful mastery of emotions, halftones, plasticity deliver indescribable pleasure when immersed in the film. He lives his character, he is in love with him. You literally feel through the screen, how his fingers and his covered eyelids tremble with tension, when he is close to solving, how his eyes flash, when another period of idleness and breakage is replaced by a frantic involvement in a new mystery, how tasty he inhales pipe smoke, spilling heat on his lungs, how his heart beats when he pursues his criminal prey in the step from her & #39; death' He gives you his unbridled joy and his boundless despair, his passionate inspiration and his icy calm. Conan Doyle himself could not have done better.
I can’t help but mention the brilliantly embodied Watson (Burke, Hardwick), the fantastic Colin Jeevons as Lestrade and the excellent Eric Porter – Moriarty. And the music of Patrick Gowers, piercing, swift.
Unfortunately, Brett became seriously ill after the death of his wife. He was ill for a long time, in subsequent seasons, from the beginning of the 90s, and until his death in the 95th year, you can trace all the sad transformations that occurred with him and his hero. He got old, he got loaded. Little by little, Holmes died out in it, although he worked on it until the last.
Jeremy Brett has been dead for almost a quarter of a century, and we don't know him at all. They don't want to know. It's undeserved and very biased. But he always lives on the screen and brilliantly embodied one of the most controversial and difficult images in world literature.
10 out of 10
It is often debated which Holmes is better: Livanov or Brett. While we, the Russian people, are more used to, and already born Vasily Borisovich, so the British closer Brett.
Heroes: Sherlock Holmes (Jeremy Brett) By all accounts, Holmes, although he denied this, fully fits the book description. Charismatic and generally stunning in all articles.
John Watson (David Burke, later Edward Hardwicke) When I first saw Watson playing Burke, I was surprised because that's how I imagined him when I read the book. Later, for family reasons, Burke was replaced by Hardwick, a handsome uncle who looks very soulful on the screen, so you quickly get used to him.
Moriarty (Eric Porter). It turned out to be a very formidable and serious character, really corresponding to the title of “Napolern of the criminal world”.
And the interesting thing is, Mycroft Holmes. Only here it corresponds to the book description: tall, expensive, 50 years. All data are complied with.
Also note the inimitable Lestrade performed by Colin Givons, very emotional and natural on the screen.
The importance of roles.
Here it is necessary to note the importance of the roles of Watson and Moriarty.
The role of Watson and Moriarty is increased in comparison with the book: Moriarty appears in many series, even in those where the book did not contain him. Watson is given some of Holmes’ lines and actions from the book to increase his significance.
41 short stories and several separate films based on Doyle’s novels were filmed.
If we compare Livanov and Brett, it turned out more naturally, of course, Brett, all the same the creators are real Englishmen, who know better about the life and existence of ancestors than our people far from this. From our Holmes and is full of the Russian spirit, take at least Sir Henry performed by Mikhalkov, well, could not be book Sir Henry so cheerful and cheerful, here everything is strict and mannered, everything is natural, as it should be.
Holmes' famous attributes: a hunter's hat and a pipe. Our Holmes uses exclusively them and water moment cylinders. Brett, like the book Holmes does not disdain cigars and cigarettes, puts on a cylinder or hat more often than the famous headdress.
Of course, our Holmes is the best, but Brett is the most canonical and natural.
As an avid Sherlokoman, I like to watch this series at any time of the day or night, and always get a lot of emotions from it.
Sherlock Holmes, as it should be, I know since childhood, but for a long time he was indifferent to Conandoil stories. And the popularly beloved films with Vasily Livanov in the title role did not change the situation. I really got used to the great detective only after I started watching this series from Granada Television - and the further, the more!
Of all the film adaptations (first of all, I compare with the Soviet version as the most decent), it is here that the spirit of Conan Doyle’s works and the atmosphere of the era are most reliably conveyed. This is where the authentic Victorian England is. We have — no, we have a fairy tale about England, a dream of England; Foggy Albion, as he dreamed of Russian director Igor Maslennikov. In general, when we compare a film made by foreigners about Russia and our picture on the same topic (for example, the film adaptation of Doctor Zhivago by Giacomo Campiotti and Alexander Proshkin), then the difference is immediately noticeable: where they have everything speculatively and conditionally, we have the flesh and blood of national consciousness. So it is even surprising that the Russian film about England is considered exemplary. Yes, we are characterized by “global responsiveness”, but not so much. They know themselves better than others.
The same goes for the central image. Holmes Livanova is quite a Russian man, soft, soulful, contemplative and thoughtful. Jeremy Bretta's Holmes is exactly what it should be: strict and demanding, but at the same time responsive and selfless, dry and practical, but friendly and charming. And most importantly - businesslike, energetic. The latter, he compares favorably with the hero Livanov, who, in general, also did not sit in place, but was remembered precisely by reasoning with a pipe by the fireplace. But even before the superhero, as Holmes turned out in the films of Guy Ritchie, Bretta is also far away (and glory to heaven!). It seems that this is his image: during his career, Brett did not play anywhere at all, but one participation in the “Holmes” is enough to perpetuate the name for posterity. Elijah Wood will also be remembered for Frodo wherever he plays.
About Watson: between Granada Watson and the Soviet distance as a whole is not so striking, but there is a nuance - in the first series this role was played by David Burke, and then he was replaced by Edward Hardwick. I personally liked the way Hardwick played, although he looks decrepit.
As for the production, it faithfully reproduces the written by Conan Doyle and adds something from itself - and this "something" only adorns the plot of the original source. After all, Conan Doyle wrote, firstly, briefly, and secondly, as dryly as possible, so that the story as much as possible resembles a mathematical problem. And, to stretch each opus for 50 minutes of screen time, the creators of the series had to bring to mind the dramatic component (as a result, each series has well-performed supporting roles) and saturate the plot with sketches of English life and lyrical landscape inserts. It all turned out great: 50 minutes was just right for one story - not crumpled or smeared. But a few "double" series, lasting 100 minutes, look boring - the experiment was not very successful, as it seems to me.
The disadvantage can be considered and rather sluggish scenes of action - fights, shootouts, chase, etc. There was no big budget for the series. But, perhaps, this is for the best – in any case, you can perceive watching such a movie as a protest against the dominance of action in modern detectives – because external effectivity in them has long prevailed over intelligence. And in general, to look at the most close to the original version of Holmes, against the background of a wave of unconventional interpretations, is at least unfashionable. But, hopefully, this thought will prevent a few – the rest of the audience will appreciate the series from Granada. I dare say one of the best shows ever created.
For me, this version of Sherlock Holmes is canonical. I absolutely do not share the enthusiastic attitude to the domestic series - for me it is an endless facepalm, from and to, and I do not understand how such a product can have such a number of admirers and admirers. Well, I have nothing against patriotic feelings towards the creation of our Soviet film industry, especially, perhaps I missed the fact that the vast majority watched these films as a child, and it was easy to impress a child at that time, Conan Doyle was still lying unread, and nobody really knew anything about English culture, so there was no break in the template. Everything's fine.
Well, to hell with it, with the Soviet adaptation, the review is devoted to the Granada English series, and I will try to explain what so hooked me in this version of Sherlock Holmes.
This series is English. To the bone marrow, true Englishness, and that's beautiful. When you hear Jeremy Brett speak beautifully, it's just fine. He's part of that culture, part of that era. On it, the caps are the caps, the cylinder and the cane are the cylinder and the cane, and the tweed jacket is the tweed jacket. Brett with the violin is beautiful, Brett smoking the pipe is organic and painfully real, and there is no doubt that we are watching the very adventures of Sherlock Holmes described by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. His Sherlock is the best Sherlock, for me. I believe that his Sherlock is a drug addict, a genius, a completely extraordinary personality, etc., etc. I just believe him, unlike our homely cozy Livanov, in which there is no madness - and after all, Conandoil's Sherlock Holmes is absolutely not mentally healthy. And the eagle nose, cartilaginous face, rapid movements and intelligent eyes with the spark of crazy Brett - the best image of classic Holmes, I saw on TV.
All the other components are entourage, perfectly complementing Brett's game. These are landscapes of England, these are views of London, this is a pleasant atmosphere of old England, this is a touching friendship between Sherlock and Watson (during the series, several actors played doctors at once, but I managed to get used to all of them), this is the works of Conan Doyle, which were taken and captured on film.
If you want Sherlock Holmes to be real English, materialized, classic, like a 5 p.m. tea party, Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is for you. There's nothing to complain about. A stunning series, the most beautiful Sherlock, a worthy embodiment of the work of Sir Arthur.
10 out of 10
Autumn fog is thickening... Monotonously drizzling outside the window rain... Dreary time... Want an adventure? To the horror of drama? Something mysterious? Do you feel like a detective?
Anything is possible...
Everything is possible when Jeremy Brett, “the definitive Holmes of his era”, an actor with an aristocratic pedigree, has already played famous classical characters in the Old Vic troupe and at the Royal National Theatre, takes on the case. On account of his more than fifty roles in various film adaptations, including D’Artagnan in the television production “Three Musketeers” (1966). On this occasion, Brett joked that as an actor he "rarely managed to get into the XX century." As you can see, rich stage experience allowed to hone to filigree acting skills. Especially if in the frame fate twice brings with such a charming partner as the incomparable Audrey Hepburn (1956-War and Peace, 1964-My Fair Lady).
Which one of you is Holmes?
- ?? Indeed!
What question? We can see who Holmes is, although there is no official connection. Holmes' unbridled temperament is veiled by a seeming indifference to how he impresses others. Rapid, impetuous, unceremonious, it is Holmes against the background of the English polite and thorough Watson creates the illusion of ease of revealing secrets and unraveling intrigues. So the grace of interpretation becomes not only a stylistic feature of the image of Holmes created by Jeremy Brett, but also an important component of the John Hawksworth script based on the stories of Arthur Conan Doyle about the great detective.
These are very deep waters.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1984-1985), produced by Granada TV, does not start with the first story, but with the series Scandal in Bohemia. And unwittingly, like Holmes, you fall under the spell of the beautiful and dangerous Irene Adler in a wonderful interpretation of Gayle Hunnicutt, a former famous top model who debuted in the acclaimed film Wild Angels (1966).
You will excuse me while I satisfy myself.
How not to get carried away with investigations of the most intricate and mystical cases of the famous duo among detectives? All 13 episodes look in one breath and rightfully allow you to call the series a classic of the detective genre. I am personally pleased that Jeremy Brett starred in the sequel (in total, 41 episodes) of this film, although he was not without reason afraid to remain a “one-role actor”. Now one can only be surprised by Brett’s repeated assurances that, by a variety of parameters and due to the peculiarities of his character, the role of a cold, judicious detective simply does not suit him. Think of it! How convincing his Holmes looks on the screen! Completeness and methodicalness, erudition, allowing you to choose from seemingly insignificant trifles that will give the key to the solution.
It is very essential that you follow my instructions. There is a distinct element of danger.
Oh yes, of course, it is extremely important for all actors to follow Holmes's instructions. You could call it a necessity. And this is instantly sobering, not allowing you to panic. That's what Holmes believes is 100.
What are you doing, Watson?
- I am using your methods.
The famous method of deduction, no less than Holmes himself, was actually “advertised” by Dr. Watson. Of course, in the shadow of the brilliant Brett Holmes, the character of the less impressive doctor does not appear so brightly. But this, it turns out, is quite enough that later David Burke successfully appeared in other very popular projects, such as Poirot (series, 1989-...), Pure English Murders (series, 1997-...), The Woman in Black (2012).
I can't see any connection...
Watson did not see any connection, and personally I do not cease to be pleasantly surprised by the appearance ... you have no idea! Harry-Potter's Aunt Petunia, sorry, Fiona Shaw, or... Maurice Hall, of course, I mean James Wilby, who won the Silver Prize at the 1987 Venice Festival. Watch this classic series and see for yourself how many actors known to us today received vouchers from the hands of Holmes.
The more I see, the more my admiration increases...
The admiration for Holmes grows with each episode, and Watson is right, and I agree. I will draw a line with the words of contemporaries of the premiere show: "a completely authentic and faithful adaptation of the character's best cases."
For the best embodiment of a canonically verified character: