Review of The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) by Ben L — 06 Apr 2016

With many of these classic films I feel like I'm missing something by not seeing them in context of the era they were released. This movie was widely acclaimed as one of the great film interpretations of Sherlock Holmes, yet I had some serious issues with it. Before we go into the flaws I found in the film, I should detail the things I enjoyed. First of all, Basil Rathbone was very charming as Sherlock Holmes. I liked how he portrayed Holmes as an eccentric, but also intelligent and mentally superior to others around him. I always enjoy murder mysteries and specifically Sherlock Holmes stories, so the puzzle of trying to figure out whodunit was fun. The execution of the dog attack scene was brilliantly done. My love of dogs often causes me to find their viciousness on film unconvincing, but this one looked and acted seriously violent. I had genuine concern for the character (and whatever actor/stuntman actually participated in that sequence) so it was a great moment of the movie that had me holding my breath.

Now to walk through a laundry list of struggles I had with The Hound of the Baskervilles: There were a number of character motivations and other actions in the film that didn't make sense to me. Sherlock abandoning a man he was trying to protect was irresponsible at best, and his justification was poorly thought out. Several people making treks across the moor were dumb, as if there was no other method of transportation. While the solution to the mystery made sense to me, I felt there was no way we could deduce that solution from watching, I prefer a mystery that leaves the viewer a few breadcrumbs for us to puzzle through. For a Sherlock Holmes story, he is not in the story for a very long time, which irritates me immensely. The amount of time spent bouncing back and forth between sets was almost comical. It's like the entire movie could be plotted on a zigzagging graph of indoor scene, then moor scene, then indoor scene, then moor scene. It just seemed like they could have rewritten some of it and accomplished more in a single trip through the moor rather than constantly coming back and then going out again. Easily my biggest struggle, though, was with the dialogue. There was something in the delivery, and in the way it was written that felt so artificial. It never for a moment felt like I was watching a character talk about something, I was merely watching actors deliver lines. In many ways, it came across like it was a stage play, a pretty good one but not really a cinematic experience.