The Silent Sherlock: A Review of Three Classic Cases – As You Investigate With Holmes the Mysteries of the Restored 1920s | film

TThe British Film Institute has restored three of the short two-reel silent films in the Stoll Pictures Sherlock Holmes series from the early 1920s – and they are also highly witty, watchable and lively entertainments. The star is English stage actor Elle Norwood, whose handsome, troubled, sensitive face emerges from the screen in extreme close-up in the first of these films, A Scandal in Bohemia, from 1921. Dr. Watson was played in all the films by Hubert Willis.

In this first film, our hero shows off his talents as a master of disguise; The King of Bohemia approaches Holmes in his room in Baker Street, wearing a mask (because he is very worried about being recognised), although Holmes’ powers of deduction (and of course his superior mastery of this type of fraud) allow him to annoy the King at once. He wants Holmes to steal an incriminating photo taken of him with a young woman—an “adventure,” as he quaintly puts it—which might prove embarrassing. This is modern stage actress Irene Adler, played by Joan Beverly, and Holmes manages to get on stage with Adler mid-performance to pull off a daring stunt. But surprisingly, Adler is the only one who can outdo Holmes.

In the 1922 film The Golden Pince-Nez, a dead man is found with this object in his fist, and Holmes astutely conjectures what kind of person would have worn these glasses. And in the final issue from 1923, Holmes confronts Napoleon of Crime, Moriarty himself (played by Percy Standing), over their massive hand-to-hand combat, which was originally moved from Reichenbach Falls to Cheddar Gorge.

What’s striking, especially in the first of these, is the use of real locations in London – a city that Conan Doyle would have been familiar with. These films were made with the knowledge and approval of Conan Doyle, who was a great fan of Norwood’s performance, and this may have influenced his composition of later stories, and Sean Connery has also been said to have influenced Ian Fleming’s conception of James Bond in the last years of Fleming’s life.