Perceptions of Falling

I read the new story in the latest Sirenia Digest this morning, "NEITHER FROM NOR TOWARDS" by Caitlin R. Kiernan. It's sort of an alternate version of one of her older stories, "Galapagos". I enjoyed it, particularly as it revolves around a number of references to the first couple chapters of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

I think the reason there's never been a proper film version of the Alice books is that their genius is in how much they accomplish with so little. That first part of the story, where Alice is falling and having confused thoughts about her identity, her physical location, her knowledge, and her perception are such compelling prompts for interpretation. Every film or video game version inevitably boils down to the adapter's interpretation so that it cannot match the depth and complexity of those relatively simple twenty or so pages of a children's story. "NEITHER TO NOR FROM" captures some of that sense of disorientation as Caitlin expands out from one particular facet with a story about Mars and a strange artefact. It's good.

Alice in Wonderland has been on my mind a lot lately. So has Sherlock Holmes. In addition to the big life change of moving to a different country, my life in Japan also means I'm living in the countryside for the first time after 40 years of living in a big city. Without going into too much detail, I'm finding Holmes' famous quote about the countryside to be quite true. You can hear Jeremy Brett delivering it in this adaptation of "The Copper Beeches" (at around 23:40):

The Sign of the Red Hair

I've had another English text book make reference to Sherlock Holmes at a junior high school here in Japan. Some kids do seem to be aware of him, mostly through the popular anime and manga Detective Conan. The character was named after Arthur Conan Doyle. This time, the text book specifically references "The Red-headed League". So I read it again to make it into a presentation for the class.

I love the slightly implausible strangeness of it. I don't think it's a story that could be translated to a modern setting. I think now someone setting up a bogus fund for red-headed men would draw too much attention, especially with a line of red-headed men lined down the block. But on the streets of Victorian London, I can picture it working.

It's fascinating seeing the description of the neighbourhood around Jabez Wilson's pawnshop. A vegetarian restaurant is mentioned. I suspect it would've been like the vegetarian menu options here in Japan which usually have chicken broth or bonito flakes.

I started reading the next story, "A Case of Identity", in my copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. It starts with one of my favourite quotes from Holmes. It's part of a longer speech about how "fact is stranger than fiction", a sentiment I don't really agree with. But I love this comment from Holmes;

"If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outré results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable."

Twitter Sonnet #1572

Enshrined in carrot tubes, the golfers sleep.
With boredom, Holmes could seal a letter tight.
The camping kids were counting ghostly sheep.
Then something strange obscured the forest night.
The room could shake but not dislodge the song.
Emboldened pants would cut the flow of blood.
A sandy path would lead the river wrong.
But hardened salt could stand in rainy mud.
A Gremlin sat alone among the cars.
Electric sparks began the model storm.
A stamp sufficed to sign for absent Mars.
The nurse forgot to fax the patient's form.
A common fire burnt a shadow pan.
The field of metal wheat was made by man.

The Mouse in the Deerstalker

What if Sherlock Holmes was a mouse? It's a question not often asked, but it was answered anyway by Disney's 1986 animated film The Great Mouse Detective. It's a homage not only to the original Sherlock Holmes stories but also to a specific, popular incarnation--Basil Rathbone. The children's books on which the film's based are even more explicit about it, being called Basil of Baker Street. A far less ambitious effort than The Black Cauldron, this Disney film achieves much greater success at being fun and exciting. It even succeeds at having a better villain, a Moriarty pastiche called Ratigan, voiced by none other than Vincent Price. Along with a peg-legged bat henchmen, the villains in this film significantly outshine its heroes.

Vincent Price carries off an extraordinarily manic, bombastic performance brilliantly, especially as it's matched by equally expressive animation. A big fellow crammed into a suit and cloak, he seems a combination of Lon Chaney in London After Midnight and Paul Muni in Scarface. Although he's clearly a rat, we discover at the end of his great musical number that he seeks to present himself as a mouse. He actually feeds a henchman, a mouse, to a cat when he dares call Ratigan a rat. I believe it's the only time I've ever seen a cartoon cat actually catch and devour a cartoon mouse.

Perhaps this is the lasting influence of The Black Cauldron and The Fox and the Hound. For a brief time, Disney was a little more comfortable showing death.

Ratigan's hangup about being seen as a rat takes us back to classism, though, especially since at one point Basil calls him a "sewer rat" in contrast to Ratigan's attempt to pass himself off as royalty. Again, I'm reminded of Paul Muni in the original Scarface, gesturing at the "World is Yours" sign.

As if Ratigan weren't enough, he's accompanied by a peculiar chief henchmen, a bat with a peg leg voiced by the legendary voice artist Candy Candido. The animation matches his inimitable voice well--jittery and aggressive, he also seems a bit like a 1930s gangster or Universal monster.

But what of Basil (Barrie Ingham) and Dawson (Val Bettin), the story's version of Holmes and Watson? They're . . . fine. Really kind of run of the mill, actually. Dawson isn't very interesting at all, not even being a lovable doofus like Nigel Bruce in the Rathbone films. He does have one amusing moment where he's carried away by a kick line, something that may have been consciously borrowed from 1970's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. Basil is fun when he's energetically solving a problem though, surprisingly, he doesn't come off much like Basil Rathbone. Indeed, according to Wikipedia, his portrayal is based more on Leslie Howard.

The Great Mouse Detective invites obvious comparisons to The Rescuers though I can't say for sure which is the better film. Both have strong villains. The Rescuers has better protagonists but The Great Mouse Detective has better music. After the embarrassingly bad songs in The Rescuers and The Fox and the Hound, Disney wasn't taking any chances--they got Elmer Bernstein for The Black Cauldron and Henry Mancini for The Great Mouse Detective. In the latter case, they were able to make it pay off for one really good musical number, "The World's Greatest Mind".

Also like The Rescuers, the case on which our protagonists are engaged involves a child in peril, though, in this instance, at least initially, it's the parent that's abducted, not the child herself. Her father is a Scottish mouse voiced by Alan Young, who also voiced Scrooge McDuck and he never quite succeeds at making the mouse sound any different, which is a bit distracting. He's a toy maker, captured by Ratigan so he can make a mechanical replacement for the Queen in a plot reminiscent of the Doctor Who serial The Androids of Tara.

The book has the mice consciously imitating Holmes while the film simply has Basil living in the same building with no explanation for his aping the human's style. There's a brief cameo by a recording of Basil Rathbone put into the mouth of Holmes, which is charming for those of us who love Basil Rathbone. And I do, though my favourite Holmes is still Jeremy Brett.

The Great Mouse Detective is available on Disney+.

Grim Stones on a Cold Land

Sherlock Holmes travels to a gloomy prep school to find a missing boy in The Adventure of the Priory School. One of Arthur Conan Doyle's original Sherlock Holmes stories, collected in The Return of Sherlock Holmes, it provided the source material for one of my favourite episodes of the great Granada series starring Jeremy Brett as Holmes.

Directed by John Madden, who went on to direct the much cheerier Shakespeare in Love, the episode takes Conan Doyle's ingenious mystery and covers it with heavy gloom appropriate to its locations which include the chilly priory and the surrounding moorland.

With the constant background tension of a missing child whose fate remains unknown, one might expect a frantic pace. Certainly the episode begins, as does the original story, with the school's founder, Dr. Huxtable, appearing in a nervous state at Baker Street, his clothes and beard, Holmes notes, evidence of his great hurry. He's played in the episode by Christopher Benjamin, whom Doctor Who fans would recognise as buffoonish Jago from The Talons of Weng-Chiang. Not a face that inspires an atmosphere of gloomy contemplation.

But most of the episode feels much more static than the original story, which is propelled along by Holmes' deductions. These are spread more thinly in a television episode that allows for the realities of travel in 1904 England and the slow process of gathering clues. All this allows the atmosphere of the cold and rocky landscape as well as the squalid inn--renamed Champion Jack from The Fighting Cock for the episode--to sink in and complement the terribly lengthening hours while the child's fate remains a mystery.

A scene is added for the episode of Watson (Edward Hardwicke) laughing at the supper table with school faculty about the boy's family history--his father, a Duke (Alan Howard), resides at nearby Holdernesse Hall. Huxtable is mortified that people would take the opportunity to mock the Duke on a subject over which it's established the nobleman is sensitive. Indeed, it seems a bit out of character for Watson.

Like most of the series, though, the episode takes care to be as faithful an adaptation of the story as possible. It does diverge pretty significantly in its ending mainly, I suspect, for the needs of the more visual medium which finally does require a chase. Conan Doyle's story resolves more quietly but in both cases Holmes is justifiably enraged by the Duke's surprisingly callous attitude about the case. He comes off even worse in the original story, being partly responsible for a murder.

I wished the episode included more of Holmes' deductions from the story but Jeremy Brett is fantastic. His smoking habit probably wasn't helpful next to his terrible health problems but he certainly looks elegant with a cigarette, gazing out the window of that miserable inn, trying to figure it all out.