The end for Elvey and Eille... The Sign of Four (1923), Barbican with John Sweeney

We were warned before the performance to expect some vintage British racism and a high-speed motorboat chase – and the film didn’t disappoint.

The Sign of Four was released some months after the third and final series of shorter Sherlocks from Stoll films and, as the audience clearly knew, their hero’s fall from Cheddar Gorge in The Final Problem (1923) was far from fatal.

It marked the return of Maurice Elvey as director and his deft touches ensure a thrilling end to the franchise as Eille Norwood exits in style being much more at the centre of things than in the first Stoll feature when the Baskerville hound tended to dominate as The Great Detective went deep, deep undercover. Here, as in the three shorts shown earlier this month at the Barbican, Norwood emphatically demonstrates what Conan Doyle described as: “…the brooding eye which excites expectation” along with  his “… quite unrivalled power of disguise."

"...unrivalled power of disguise..."

Norwood explained his Sherlock method in the Stoll newsletter in 1921: “My idea of Holmes is that he is absolutely quiet. Nothing ruffles him, but he is a man who intuitively seizes on points without revealing that he has done so, and nurses them with complete inaction until the moment when he is called upon to exercise his wonderful detective powers…”

Norwood is indeed a remarkably “still” presence and his darting eyes, hooded by decades of actorly observation, never reveal all they have clearly seen…

Now for the awkward part… The film is over 90 year’s old and the story even older…when the Orient was often associated with dangerous mystery. The film starts with the arrival of Prince Abdullah Khan (Fred Raynham… yes; Fred!) at 222 Baker Street who spooks the life out of Mrs Hudson (Madame d'Esterre) with strange and intense looks. He also bothers Sherlock and Watson (here played by Arthur M. Cullin following the untimely death of Mr Willis after the end of the last series) by pretending to be Russian before Sherlock exposes him as an Indian… The nuances are lost on modern viewers but in the early Twenties the former could be heroic White Russians and the latter rebellious nationalist-terrorists.

The Prince has come to enlist the detective in finding a missing woman but is sent away with a flea in his ear for his deception, coincidentally passing the woman in question on her way in as he skulks off into the pearly-grey bustle of Baker Street.

Isobel Elsom

The woman is one Mary Morstan (Isobel Elsom soon to be the third Mrs Elvey) who wants Holmes to investigate the murder of her father – killed by a most un-British poisoned dart - and the pearls she receives every year from an address in Twickenham. She also has a mysterious set of four signs found on her father’s body: what do they mean for his death?

Holmes looks to camera and the title card reads “This should be exciting!” The boys are back in their well-honed routine and Eille and audience couldn’t be happier.

Sherlock soon deduces that the signs indicate a conspiracy between four men and that, whilst Miss Morstan’s father was almost certainly one of the four, another must have broken away and, through guilt, started sending the gifts to his daughter. Clearly the Prince is also connected…

Mary receives a message asking her to rendezvous at the American embassy at 7.45 pm, where she will learn more of her father’s demise. She keeps the appointment with Holmes and Watson in tow. There’s a function on at the embassy and Elvey creates a fascinating scene with ordinary London faces gawping with envious curiosity at the bright young things arriving in their rich attire – it feels like a pointedly political moment.

Man of mysteries

A man approaches Mary and takes her, Holmes and Watson to a large run-down house on the river bank at Twickenham. The boys soon disarm the man and discover he is Doctor Sholto (Humberston Wright) part of the conspiracy of four and in fear of his life from the two others.

The scene shifts to what looks convincingly like location shooting in India where the plot was hatched by prisoners who knew the location of stolen treasure. Mary’s father was the governor and he was included in the scheme… but Sholto made off with all of the loot himself leaving the other two, the Prince and Jonathan Small (Norman Page) to suspect and kill the Governor as their prime suspect.

Sholto goes to another room to fetch the treasure but is killed before he or his assailant can locate the treasure… and the game is truly on…

Sherlock gets to try a few disguises as the plot turns slightly procedural and the police arrive to jump to the wrong conclusions. This is, of course, normally Watson’s role but when he’s not paying close attention to Mary he’s being tortured by the baddies about that lost loot.

In spite of the police contribution, Sherlock gradually establishes the actuality and everything culminates in a genuinely thrilling race between motorboats and cars during which Elvey ticks off London locations from bridges Kew, Hammersmith and Tower to Fleet Street and the Strand: like one of those contrived “races” on Top Gear only better and without that Yorkshire bloke.

"Help" from the Police

Elvey cuts quickly throughout and this last passage has smoothly multi-tracked perils like DW Griffith on fast forward – and yet this is a very British application of the technique being used to move the story along with maximum efficiency. A fitting end to the series and one that felt thoroughly modern.

John Sweeney was seen warming up his hands before kick-off and he needed considerable dexterity to keep pace. His improvisations expertly supported the story and, along with Messrs Brand and Horne he shows what a difference individual style makes to the silent experience. Every live performance is unique and this adds musical tales of the unexpected to every “fixed” silent text… Excellent entertainment for a windy Sunday afternoon!

The Sign of Four is only available from the BFI archives but hopefully these Barbican screenings will help it and the other Elvey/Norwood films get greater recognition.

Meanwhile, there’s more! Stephen Horne will be playing along to three Stoll shorts at the Phoenix Cinema on Sunday 5^th April - details on their website.

The Silent Detective... The Hound of the Baskervilles (1921), Barbican with Neil Brand

In these days of Sherlock the sociopath (UK) and a female Doctor Watson (USA) it’s hard to imagine the impact of the original stories on contemporary audiences. This film was the first feature produced as part of the Stoll series and was well received by Arthur Conan Doyle who was still writing his character at the time – this was six years before his last The Adventures of Shoscombe Old Place.

It seems that Doyle was particularly impressed with Eille Norwood who played his master detective. A vastly-experienced stage actor, Norwood so impressed the author with his obsessive attempts to bring every detail of Holmes to light that he gushed about his “brooding eye” and  his “rare quality, which can only be described as glamour, which compels you to watch an actor eagerly even when he is doing nothing.”

First edition Hound from 1902

Even though the films had moved Holmes into the modern age of telephones and motorcars, Doyle remained a fan of the forty five shorts and two features produced by Stoll and mostly directed by the great Maurice Elvey (George Ridgwell was brought in for the second “series” in 1922). All of which renders them the only author-approved televisual adaptations… what would he have made of Messrs Cumberbatch and Millar, would he consider them to have the same level of “mastery” as Mr Norwood?

This was the first in the series of screenings at the Barbican timed to coincide with an exhibition on the great detective at the nearby Museum of London. It featured Mr Neil Brand on piano who gave his all with full-on polychromatic flourishes that spiced up the action with dynamic chords of which Bernard Hermann would have been proud.

McDougall, Norwood, Raynham and Willis

The film doesn’t compare with Elvey’s 1918 Lloyd George biography or his sublime Hindle Wakes (1927) but this is to misunderstand the context of the Stoll films: rapid turn-around populist serials that were low on budget and time. There are some wonderful exterior shots and some rapid cutting as the action hots up with parallel perils whilst there are a few sequences that, given more time, the director would have perhaps refined better. It matters not, The Hound of the Baskervilles is great fun as it was always intended to be.

Eille Norwood’s Sherlock Holmes is possibly more understated than I expected but this too is a factor of the production context: he’d honed his character over the previous 15 shorts in 1921 and, by now, was both well known as and well used to his detective. You have to view his performance in the context of the broader series and thankfully we have three shorts and another feature to go.

Eille Norwood

He is indeed a magnetic presence on screen and his Sherlock remains unflustered by stories of mythical hell-hounds and goes about his new case in calmly-innovative fashion.

Dr. Watson is played by Hubert Willis who was in all of the series save the last film following his untimely passing. He is a dogged (pun intended and there may be more…) and brave companion and is sent by Holmes to investigate the characters in and around Baskerville Hall following the suspicious death of Sir Charles Baskerville and to help protect the inheritor of the title, Henry Baskerville (Rex McDougall) an almost overlooked relative of Sir Henry returned from the United States.

Hubert Willis and Eille Norwood on another case...

Sir Charles’ physician, Dr. James Mortimer (Allan Jeayes), tells of his client’s last night and how he was terrified of the family curse:  a flame-charged hound is said to roam the moors before the death of every Baskerville! Sir Charles was found dead from a heart attack but… what caused it?

Watson observes the rather suspicious family butler, Barrymore (a splendidly wide-eyed comic turn from Fred Raynham) as well as the brother and sister from the neighbouring mansions, Roger Stapleton (Lewis Gilbert) and his nervy sister, Beryl (Catina Campbell). To be honest, a large number of people are behaving suspiciously, suspicious…

We see the dog rampaging across the moors, head seemingly engulfed in supernatural flames whilst the mystery deepens when an escaped convict is known to be nearby and a mysterious figure is seen pacing the moors in the midnight hours…

Did the butler actually do it?

Everything is set for the re-entry of the formidably forensic detective as Beryl faces peril, Roger gets cross, Barrymore signals danger and Henry almost shows his pedigree, chum, as that dog just won’t lie down.

The Hound of the Baskervilles is an, all too rare, example of popular early 20’s British film and one based on great indigenous fiction.  This is the stuff our great grand-parents lapped up (pun etc…) in their rare time and we’re not so different today as the success of the Sherlocks continues world-wide.

The film is also pretty hard to see and given that the print used was in such good quality, surely it’s ripe for the box-set treatment? Maurice Elvey presents Eille Norwood as Sherlock Holmes... it has a ring doesn’t it?

In the meantime,there is a DVD-R with three of the shorts available from Amazon.com - The Man With The Twisted Lip (1921), The Dying Detective (1921) and The Devils Foot (1921).