THE CASE OF THE SILK STOCKING (DVD) THE BBC SHERLOCK HOLMES

THE CASE OF THE SILK STOCKING (DVD) THE BBC SHERLOCK HOLMES COLLECTION

Erittäin hyväkuntoinen DVD ja kotelo vuodelta 2005, kesto 97 minuuttia, kieli on englanti, tekstit vain englanti. Kotelon tekstit on englanniksi. Pääosissa Rupert Everett, Anne Carroll, Neil Dudgeon, Ian Hart, Helen McCrory.

"Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking is a British television film originally broadcast on BBC One in the UK on 26 December 2004. Produced byTiger Aspect Productions, it was written by Allan Cubitt and was a sequel to the same company's adaptation of The Houd of the Baskervilles, made for the BBC two years previously. Although Silk Stocking retained the same Dr. Watson, Ian Hart, , this time the character of Sherlock Holmes was played by Rupert Everett.

In November 1903, young women are being killed in London, each with a silk stocking stuffed down her throat. Watson seeks help from the retired and disenchanted Holmes, who determines that the victims are well-born ladies, not prostitutes. Evidence found includes a thumbprint, a pair of ladies' dancing shoes, broken glass, a strong smell of chloroform and a silk stocking removed from a victim's gullet. It seems that the killer has a foot fetish.

The London of this 2004 Sherlock Holmes film seems to be permanently enshrouded in fog.  Whenever any character steps outside, they are enveloped in a thick peasouper that distorts all faces and scenery.  However, rather than summoning the spirit of the Sherlock Holmes’s London, which appears to be the intended purpose, it comes across as a mere parody—the London that uninformed viewers expect, rather than what is true.  The same goes for Dr. Watson’s American fiancé “Mrs. Vandeleur,” played by Helen McCrory (recently seen as Narcissa Malfoy in the latest Harry Potter films).  She speaks with a non-regional American accent, and has a rather obnoxious habit of referring to the Great Detective as “Sherlock”; she freely discusses sexual deviancies over tea (under the auspices of her career as a psychoanalyst), and has committed the ultimate crime of convincing Watson to dress down for dinner.  Perhaps the fog is a metaphor for the mystery in which Holmes is embroiled (Davies 192); and perhaps Mrs. Vandeleur is a stab at “English stuffiness or American informality” (Duncan 231).  But the overall impression is more heavy-handed: London is drab and grey; Americans are boorish and unrefined.   

Hart’s portrayal of Dr. Watson remains disagreeable and angry, and Everett, as the new Sherlock Holmes, often seems morally dubious—even slipping into a young woman’s bedroom as she sleeps when he needs her assistance.  To his credit, “Physically, [Everett] has a look and manner of [Jeremy] Brett about him: he is tall, dark, handsome, with saturnine features and a prominent nose, but producer Elinor Day was of the opinion that he was more like [Basil] Rathbone” (Davies 192).  Holmes and Watson seem to spend very little time on screen together, and when they do, a significant portion of their time is spent arguing, sniping, or largely ignoring each other.

Also at issue here, as in Roxburgh’s 2002 performance, is Sherlock Holmes’s drug use.  The film opens with Holmes smoking in an opium den, a lascar at his elbow.  We later learn that he had been absent from Baker Street nearly three days.  Opium is not at all Holmes’s drug of choice, and in the canon only uses it one time as a part of a disguise: “I suppose, Watson…that you imagine that I have added opium-smoking to cocaine injections, and all the other little weaknesses on which you have favoured me with your medical views” (TWIS).  Again, in this film we also see Holmes’s injecting himself with cocaine in the middle of a case, presumably when he would have the least need of it."

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