The Woman in Black and White

I've just started watching an excellent old series of Sherlock Holmes movies from the 1940s that my Grandma told me about. She'd seen them when she was younger and I agree with her that Basil Rathbone makes an amazing Mr. Holmes. Not that I have anything against Robert Downey Jr in particular, but that adaptation of the story—in my opinion—was practically a mockery to Sir Authur Conan Doyle's brilliant work. In this version, I love the interactions between the characters and the quietness of some scenes as Holmes is deep in thought or plays his violin as Watson smokes his pipe. I guess what bothers me about many modern period movies is that they basically dress up a modern man in old clothing. They don't capture the character and atmosphere of it all. Today's movies can't spend more than two seconds of quiet...perhaps because they fear the audience will be bored? But that was such an integral part of their lives back then. The pace of life was so much slower. Holmes should be an extremely intellectual and clever man, more concerned about a difficult mental challenge than looking suave in a ten minute gunfight. But I digress...

We saw "Dressed to Kill" the other day (about a trio of music boxes that are hardly worth money but mysteriously worth a life), and just now finished "The Woman in Green" (where a serial killer's trademark is to keep a severed finger from his victims).

The best part is that if you have Netflix instant, you can watch many of them for free! I definitely recommend it. They're really well done, extremely entertaining, and capture the true brilliance of Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

Here are some stills from "The Woman in Green" :