Sherlock Holmes - The Master Blackmailer

Rating:
Summary: Not a thriller but intrigues and affairs in the hiding
Review: This Sherlock Holmes story is quite surprising. We know the criminal from nearly the very start, and the whole story is about how Sherlock Holmes will stop him. Of course there are a few surprises and we know that he will succeed. That is not the point. The film is interesting for a first reason : it shows Sherlock Holmes's method very well with planning, disguising, exploring, pressurizing, and a few other niceties and oddities. Just for this reason the film is entertaining. We will though criticize slightly the fact that Sherlock Holmes is often shouting a little bit too loud. The film is also interesting for a second reason : it reveals the hypocrisy of Victorian society. And there it is great. All those women and men from the good society, more or less from the nobility, all have their little secrets, especially letters they received or they wrote from or to their sweet hearts of their younger days. So it is nothing but affairs and sentimentalese capers in all possible directions : a man for a drag queen (yes it did exist in those days), a girl for a man who is « below » her standing, etc. This Victorian society was thus nothing but a big hypocritical bowl of vipers. It was quite courageous from Conan Doyle to dare touch such a subject, of course with no details what so ever. We know that details would have been deadly for the author : Oscar Wilde ended up in prison for ... everyone knows what, and « Lady Chatterley » by D.H. Lawrence was banned till the sixties of the twentieth centuries, which means it was only available in continental editions and on the continent, and everyone in England had it of course, or at least had read it. The film is thus a beautiful picture of this aging Victorian society. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Paris Universities II and IX.