The Woman in Green

There’s a series of murders going on in London—but then again, when aren’t there? Thankfully, Sherlock Holmes is around to piece together the details and bring the spree to an end. In other words, this flick is pretty much exactly what you’d expect from a circa 1945 Basil Rathbone vehicle. There are, of course, issues with the production vis-a-vis what we know of Conan Doyle’s canon. The setting is contemporary, thus stripping the tale of all of the usual late-empire trappings (the ‘40s setting is so out of step with what one would think of as the hero’s natural habitat that the erstwhile Victorian gentleman may as well be Sam Spade rather than Sherlock Holmes). There is a mystery, but no client; the consulting detective is merely invited into the case by the baffled police inspector (Gregson, in this instance; the client interview is a staple of Holmes stories, but is bafflingly absent in many of these movie adaptations), and the climax of the movie and the case is less a matter of the sleuth putting the puzzle together and more a matter of Holmes simply outfoxing the villains. So how, then , is this movie a good watch? Largely, it works on the strength of Rathbone's portrayal of the character; the more I see of him in the role, the more I judge him to be an exceptional fit for the Holmes persona. He may not match the great Jeremy Brett, but Rathbone is a physical match for the character, and he carries himself in the part much as a reader of the original tales would expect the man to be. It also helps that these entries in Universal’s Holmes series move briskly and come in at barely more than an hour. It takes little effort to watch and pays that small effort with a near iconic portrayal and an entertaining story. The success here is, dare I say it, just that elementary.