Fragile Harvest; a screening of films by Phil Hoffman and participants of the Film Farm (Independent Imaging Retreat)

         Since 1994, Ontario filmmaker Phil Hoffman has been hosting filmmaker retreats at his farm near the town of Mount Forest where each year a dozen or so artists and filmmakers converge to drink in the cool well water, share communal meals, and run a few hundred feet through their cameras. Films created during this week tend towards the highly personal, as these participants throw off their urban armor and run wildly down a gravel road of self discovery.  I knew of the these films before I knew of the Independent Imaging Retreat itself. In my viewing of hundreds of experimental films during my MFA research, I began to see patterns and themes arise. I was very excited about these fresh personal stories and their hand-made approach, but the source of influence was not yet clear. All I knew was that a new aesthetic was taking shape and having a significant impact on the national avant garde movement. 

            One may easily suggest that there is something about going to a farm, away from the noise of the city, away from the continuous interaction with computers and phones and schedules, that brings out stories in people. Perhaps the open air is a vacuum, drawing your words and thoughts from us, forcing us to share them with the world. Perhaps this is true, at least for big city dwellers, but from someone who has spent sufficient hours standing amid blowing fields of grain, wandering past decrepit wooden farm structures, and climbing over inconveniently placed barbed wire fences, my intuition makes me doubt this analogy.

            I would suggest that it is not solely Phil Hoffman’s farm which inspires the nature of work created there, but it is Phil himself who is the key. I attended the “imaging retreat” (or “film farm” as we all called it) in 2002. Margaret and William (age 10 months) came with me as my perpetual muses, but home is always left behind when one reaches the Hoffman farm. It is certainly quiet and peaceful, but that can be said for any of a million other hunks of land in this country. More significantly, it is welcoming. This is almost entirely to the credit of Phil and his hand-picked team of workshop leaders, like life coaches who can load Bolexes. Each participant is treated as an invited guest, never like a paying consumer. In turn, every one of them seems inclined to reciprocate by embracing all of the hosts and attending filmmakers with warmth and respect.

            Central to the film farm is the barn which houses darkrooms to develop film, open spaces to hang film to dry, screening areas, and relaxation spots to talk, think, or read. No modern complex could be as versatile or accommodating. The so-called enemies of filmmaking; dust, wind, light leaks, and noise, are all acceptable commodities in this environment. To fight the flaws is to fight again nature itself. To accept nature as an external force helps to open the door to express your inner nature (while being a vegan and utilizing meditation crystals remains strictly optional).

            After a week of getting your hands dirty, you emerge with the raw materials of a film. This is more than just images on emulsion, it is ideas and inspirations. The direct process of creating, contemplating, exhibiting, and critiquing, is crucial to the film retreat. You find yourself able to respond to comments, rework the project multiple times, and shape it into something you can truly be proud of.

            The films created at the film farm deny the necessity of the film industry infrastructure by allowing a single filmmaker to personally control a maximum number of technical processes. Since the early nineties when the retreats began, the 16mm form has been in rapid decline. Laboratories have been reducing the number of services available; optical sound tracks, reversal processing, work printing, negative cutting, and answer printing are all considered too specialized for most labs to even consider offering anymore. Making at least some of these techniques part of the filmmaker's tool belt not only ensures some continuation of the art form, it also empowers those filmmakers, making them more confident to continue working with this, or any other media form. But there remains a precarious balance for pure film artists. As much as they desire to separate themselves from industry, they remain tethered to it through certain manufactured items. Most notably, Kodak has become the only supplier on this continent for black and white film stock. They continuously change and remove stocks from their inventory as they become less profitable to market. When this supply-line is severed, so too will the ability for filmmakers to practice this art. Furthermore, it has been over five years since the last 16mm projector came off the assembly line, and in the past year, the very last film cameras have been built with none of the key companies intending to return to that market. The art of celluloid filmmaking survives at the whim of tinkerers who may or may not be able to keep the existing equipment functioning.

            Creating under this shadow, it is no wonder that the filmmakers become philosophical and introspective when using it. With every roll shot, one finds him or herself asking "is this the last time I do this?". The comparison between "film-farm" filmmakers and "farm-farm" farmers begs to be made. Not only is sustainability an issue, but the process also has parallels. Images need to be carefully cultivated, gathered, processed, and delivered to the hungry consumer. The final product never reflects how much personal investment was put into it; the time and sweat and pain. Farmers and filmmakers, each working in their fields, isolated, driven by single-minded passion certainly must live in hope that what they are doing is good and necessary and that recognition will eventually come. The belief that the outcome has value must outweigh the futility that comes with being aware of the inevitable demise of this way of working.

            The films I selected for this screening are some of the more recent works to emerge from the farm, most of which are by filmmakers I was previously unfamiliar. They each feel like they are walking a delicate line, the elements and the content both fragile, as the filmmaker struggles with mortality on some level. The cycle of the seasons is always apparent, illuminating both the nature of film as art as well as life itself. Within each, either spoke or unspoken, you can sense the Hoffman's subtle hand urging the filmmaker to be brave, to reach deep within themselves, to work beyond the pain and harvest moments of truth.

Goodbye - 3.5 min., by Daniel McIntyre (2011)

McIntyre has created a montage of images, some positive and others negative, which waft over us like the a perfume, surrounding you without touching you. The blending between positive and negative, from people to animals, from water to air, all act to evoke a semi-waking, dreamlike state; the pleasure of the inexplicable. The title seems to suggest an ending or departure as perhaps the viewer is led into a dream from which there is no waking.

Lot 22, Concession 5 – 4 min., by Penny McCann (2009)

As we listen to an old man’s voice talking about growing up on a farm, we see a crack in time and watch the story like an echo, never quite as distinct as we'd hoped. The farm and the tales are both fragmented, crackling in and out of view, incomplete. Imagination fills in details but in the end we realize that each of us has experienced a different story, as fleeting as the wind.

Towards Everyday Lightning – silent, 9 min., by James Gillespie (2003)

The world within this film is like lightning, beautiful but fleeting, existing for longer in your eye and your mind than it does in reality. Gillespie uses extensive solarization (shifts from positive to negative, randomly created through light being introduced in the middle of film development) to suggest a life as a series of memories ravaged by a storm. In silence, the storm creates a tumultuous atmosphere in ironic contrast to the lethargic faceless farm labourer featured on screen.

Anamnesis – 3 min., by Scott Miller Berry (2009)

The camera seem agitated as it struggles to discover meaning below the layers of paper, some being wasp nests, others being photographs collaged onto a human face. Colour and moments of clarity don't satisfy us as the images, and the history held within them, seems too shrouded in secrecy to ever decode. Amid all the images, the man is blinded by history and paralyzed into inaction.

Once – 5 min., by Barbara Sternberg (2007)

"Once" conjures up a sensation of seeing the world for the first time, awakening in a forest and knowing only the flashes of light, trees like a veil against the sky. Sternberg posits that life is brief but important, that every moment of it is of value if we believe it to be. She begs us to open our eyes and to really see.

Destroying Angel - 32 min., by Phil Hoffman and Wayne Salazar (1998)

"Destroying Angle" is a collaboration between Hoffman and Salazar and is not, strictly speaking, made at the film farm. It represents the methods and approaches that Hoffman takes in creating a film and the legacy he has established. The structure is loose, moving fluidly between black and white and colour, sync sound and voice over, abstract and representation, metaphor and informational and most importantly between the filmmaker as maker and as subject. It is a film about dualities. There are two primary stories, that of Salazar's struggles with AIDS and his coming to terms with his father, and the story of Hoffman's wife Marion McMahon and her tragic death from cancer in 1996. The film was shot over an extended period of time, partially at the farm, partially off of it. It is about memory, how photographic images evoke feelings but often tell a different story. When Salazar's photos of his father and his dog contradict his memory of them, we realize that we cannot trust the plastic arts, that all of what we are watching is subjective. For every right there is a wrong, for every failure there is a success and this is not represented in either memory nor in photography.

This film is the metaphoric harvesting of Phil Hoffman, turning inspiration into seeds, growing them into courage for the filmmakers he touches. The film poses many questions about the nature of memory. Should we share our stories, releasing them into the world, or hold them close to our hearts? What will do more good, what will do more  harm? In a world overshadowed by memory, how can we let go? 

 

8:00 pm, Friday November 25, 2011

Saskatchewan Filmpool Co-operative

1822 Scarth Street, Regina, SK

Featuring a selection of short lyrical films

created during the legendary Independent Imaging Retreats

hosted by Ontario filmmaker Phil Hoffman over the past twenty years.

Steamboat Willie and Simon of the Desert

Today at the monthly "Sofa Cinema" screening at the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers (CSIF) I curated the two films "Steamboat Willie" and "Simon of the Desert". I introduced with the idea that surrealism comes out of the difficulty we face when an artist presents contradictory ideas or colliding images. These films, one representing innocence and conformity of family-valued commercial cinema and the other representing depravity and radicalism of independent cinema are certainly in conflict and support this notion. However, there are no absolutes and in my essay below I point out a number of similarities between the two filmmakers and the approaches to these specific works.

Art in and out of Exile: facing the music.

CSIF Classic Film Series, June 8, 2010, curated by Gerald Saul

Steamboat Willie: Director Ub Iwerks, 1928, 8 minutes

Simon of the Desert: Director Luis Buñuel, 1965, 45 minutes

Two filmmakers, each sent into exile from their homes, one crushed from the experience and the other drawing renewed strength from it. In their challenge of conventions, each of these filmmakers sought to delve into the subconscious of the viewer, to draw upon hopes, dreams, fears, and regrets. The two films I have chosen will entertain and surprise you with their eccentricities and unpredictable storylines. Their characters, one sooner, one later, inevitably must face the music.

While we, as members of the general public, have a tendency to reward predicable entertainment with our ticket money, it is the groundbreaking events which remain in our cultural memories for decades. The first film tonight represents just such an event. The introduction of sound to the animation was just one of its important features. The development of Mickey Mouse into a fresh, aggressive, and anti-establishment character is less remembered but was of equal importance at the time. Head animator, brilliant technical innovator, and once significant shareholder of the Disney Studio, Ub Iwerks is the talent behind this short. Ub worked closely with Walt and single-handily drew every panel for the first Mickey cartoon, Plane Crazy, in secret while the company was still producing “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit” for Universal Studios. While I rarely suggest that Walt Disney was an underdog in any business affairs, this is the exception. Mickey Mouse was constructed from the ashes of Disney’s fallen company and in its creation he pushed the limits of image, sound, and idea. Within five years, this character had become the emblem for his company which by then had a clear agenda to target children as their principle audience. In 1932 all of the edges were smoothed away with no more swinging cats, no more flatulents, and no more peaking under Minnie’s skirt. However, in 1928, Mickey Mouse was full of surprises and followed no predictable story structure. His past was suppressed so that Mickey would never again change. Steamboat Willie is a film that is so iconic that we think we know it but we really don’t. Its real nature has been buried under a history of iconography to ensure that Mickey (and his audience?) would remain modest, timid, and obedient.

Walt Disney is only open minded and forgiving when compared to Franco. Obsessed with loyalty, Disney treated employees who showed disrespect or who dared to take a job with another animation company ruthlessly, firing them and/or never re-hired them under any circumstances. After Ub Iwerks was given his own studio with ultimate control and authorship during the 1930s (with a contract with MGM), a major rift was driven between these two animation pioneers. However, for once, sentimentality won out and in the late 1930s Walt Disney hired back his old collaborator. Ub would never have creative control of a film again but headed up the Disney effects department to advance blue screen technologies and many other techniques. After three more decades working for the Disney Corporation, he died in 1971.

On the other hand, the brilliantly baffling Luis Buñuel , whom is known to members of the CSIF as the co-director of “Un Chien Andalou”, committed his career to challenging conventions and living un-safely. Spanish-born, Buñuel took the world stage as part of the Paris-based Surrealist movement. His work attacked all types of orthodoxy, not the least of which was the Catholic church. This led to Buñuel’s exile from his home country under the dictatorial Franco government. However, as more and more media attention was drawn to Buñuel, Franco decided to invite him back in 1961 to direct “Viridiana”. Buñuel left the country immediately after its completion with a master copy under his arm. Franco, outraged, attempted to destroy all copies of the film and promptly exiled Buñuel again. He returned to Mexico in 1961 where he continued to direct feature films including “Simon of the Desert”.

The presence of Hollywood was vast but surprisingly un- influential on Buñuel. After spending four years rewriting and dubbing foreign films for American release, Buñuel grew increasingly disappointed in the Hollywood system. He once presented the top screenwriters of the day with a chart which outlined the eight plots that every film they made fell into. Their attempts to debunk the patterns with the revealing of their new “surprising” films failed. The “surprise”, as they saw it, was simply an act of unusual casting, not unusual storytelling. For example, audience were surprised that Janet Leigh was killed so early in “Psycho”, not because of turn of events but because she was a starlet. So embedded were Hollywood studios in this star system that they had a difficult time recognising the rut they are in. Today there are even subroutines within screenwriting programs which tell you if you are writing your script correctly.

In his autobiography, Buñuel admits that he accepted contracts on a first come first serve basis which didn’t always situate his career in the most optimal ways but he felt that his honest approach to things was of greater value that maximizing personal gain. Buñuel continued to create notorious films in Mexico and France, often expressing his contempt for the Catholic Church, until his death in Mexico in 1983.

"Zip" by Tyler Banadyga

This weekend at the RPL Theatre, Tyler Banadyga's feature film "Zip" is playing to its first commercial audience. I previewed the film a couple of years ago and this to say in my regular blog:
Tyler certainly takes the notion of "rough around the edges" to its extreme with this loosely knit super-8 drama. The cast consists almost entirely of Tyler's friend and collaborator Jason Hipfner (and two short cameos including one by Tyler himself) as the film follows Jason as the title character on a road trip without destination around Saskatchewan while reading passages from novels. The camera work is usually shaky, giving the film a nervous and uncertain tone. Focus, when it occurs, seems unintentional. In that, I refer to both the working of the lens as well as the clarity of the character's motivation and the connections between the voice-over and the image on screen. The character/audience connection is further jeopardized by the consciously dispassionate readings of the texts. We are presented with a character that, even after two hours (less three minutes) of solo screen time, we do not know. It is a highly challenging film but one that offers some interesting rewards for the work a viewer is asked to put into it. A sequence near the beginning of a back-hoe tearing down a house was fascinating; I always see something alive in these machines as they destroy as well as caress the wood and brick. An image of the wasp trapped in a jar near the end of the film, a shortened version of the film Tyler made for last year's One Take Super-8 Event, is a poignant metaphor, perhaps of how we blind ourselves of the traps we are in and of the pointlessness of our lives in favour of simply continuing to move forward.

Finding the Cannibal Within: 16mm films at the Calgary Film Co-op

 This was a program I curated for the Tuesday August 11, 2009 screening at the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers Co-operative. On the second Tuesday of every month they host screenings from their 16mm collection in their fabulous "Sofa Cinema" (see image above with my niece Nicole, my son William, and CSIF's Melanie Wilmink.

Finding the Cannibal Within: a headhunter's guide to modern times.

Borneo: The Land of the Head Hunters directed by Carl Lumholtz 1915 and The Land of Mystery and Charm directed by Francis Hotham 1937 (?), compiled 1980 (77 minutes)

Cannibal Tours directed by Dennis O'Rourke 1987 (25 minutes)

The films I selected for this program were grabbed initially off of the archive shelf for their lurid titles. I have watched a number of similar “exotic” documentaries in the past and have always found them to be painfully amusing in their outdated representations of non-European peoples living in less-technologically developed environments. I have found there to be a prevalence of white superiority throughout this documentary genre, both through the actions of the people on screen as well as the scientific or adventure narrative added on top of the images. However, this was not what I discovered with these films. To my delight, even though the films are each highly constructed and hide multiple meanings behind a veil of lies, they do break that mould.

The earlier film is actually a composite of two films, tied together with segues of an on-screen narrator. Borneo: The Land of the Head Hunters by Carl Lumholtz (author of "Through Central Borneo" and "Unknown Mexico") is originally a 1915 silent film and features what they claim are the first motion picture images ever taken in Borneo. The tone of the voice-over included with this film suggests that it part of the original project but due to the dates of creation, the narrative is obviously added decades later. The original narration, in the form of title cards, has been left in place giving the viewer two simultaneous viewpoints. This film, while picturesque, is edited in a primitive style, even for its day. Single static shots are intercut with titles with no attempt at constructing a visual narrative or a continuity of action. The voice-over is only added over the images and not over the existing titles to relieve the audience and to minimize our awareness of the subtle contradictions between the two. With most images shot from a wide point of view, we are reliant on these narrative layers to aid us in interpreting the film. The relative level of truth of the narratives seems high; no extreme stories are told. We are told that this is a scientific exploration and that the head hunters pictured are putting on a performance in honour of the visitors. The scientists seem to be more guests and tourists than real anthropologists as we are reassured of the safety of the film crew and, above all, of the safety of the world. With all of its dangerous past, Borneo seems now to be as safe as any tourist destination.

The second half of this film is originally from around 1937 and is a travelogue of China by “filmmaker and traveller” Francis Hotham entitled The Land of Mystery and Charm. Again, this film is not highly politically incorrect but rather is the creation of a well meaning talented outsider. Stylistically, the film is quite nicely made with well composed cinematography and carefully paced editing. When she sticks to it being a visual study, the film is strong and enjoyable. The voice-over that Hotham presents is didactic, telling us what we are looking at in much the same way as the previous film. The music she selected to correspond to the images is entirely western (classical and jazz), giving the western viewer a level of comfort while facing the unfamiliar. Hotham rarely express opinions and is (thankfully) relatively non-judgemental. Her tourist standpoint is honest but certainly superficial. I was interested in her description of the use of time by the Chinese people. She once states that “time is of no consequence, but money is”. These sorts of observations illustrate the limitations of creating documentaries from the tourist perspective.

The 1980 narrator who ties these two old films together only problematizes the project further. Sitting on a throne, he is the personification of white European arrogance. While the films contained white people voicing opinions in the background, he reinforces the certainty that this is a film by and for white people.

The other film I am presenting is the 1987 Cannibal Tours by Australian director Dennis O'Rourke. This film avoids the mistakes of his predecessors who had attempted to make the exotic places and people their subject matter. Instead, he wisely turned the camera around and made a film about what he knew, his own culture. Cannibal Tours is less about cannibals than it is about tours. In a way that is usually reserved for satirists, O’Rourke turns the tables on situation and has us gawking and shaking our heads in disbelief at the swarms of presumptuous camera obsessed Westerners and their ridiculous ideas. Ironically, it is the “primitive” New Guinea aboriginals who are conscious of the image they present to the camera and it is the civilized westerners who seem apt to display their foolish sides. Similar to the older films, the tourists continue to be well meaning and open minded, within their own limits. This time though, it is no longer their point of view that is being expressed. O’Rourke takes the cameras to the subjects of the tourism, the so-called cannibals, and interviews them in their own language about their history, their current conditions, and their opinions of the tourists. They are either perplexed, angry, or ashamed at the state of things. In one poignant moment, a young, handsome, shirtless aboriginal man poses for photographs and is handed a coin by a delighted white woman. The interviewer asks if is difficult to earn a dollar. With downcast eyes, this viral young man who may have been a leader or warrior in another time, simply murmurs “yes”. With no non-diegetic voice-over, this film essay is a powerful critique of previous films of this genre as well as of the whole history of colonialism, capitalism, and tourism. Profound, absurd, and melancholy, Cannibal Tours redefines the travelogue.

Mike Hoolboom talks in Regina

This evening at the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina, writer/filmmaker Mike Hoolboom spoke about visible and invisible pictures. It is difficult to use words to describe Hoolboom’s presentation as it was ABOUT words, and when it comes to words, Mike has the last word. While it may be true that a picture is worth a thousand words, it does not necessarily follow that a thousand words is worth only one picture. Hoolboom regaled us with a few thousand carefully chosen words, words that he points out he did not make up himself for if he had, we would not understand them, but the images conjured by those words are inevitably different for each of us listening. Through the description of his exploration of visual imagery, Hoolboom forces us to listen, to imagine, and to remember. Blue jeans, George Bush, atomic bombs, Nashville, and the twin towers are painted for us in our minds, Mike just passes us the brush and lets us do the work. When he tells us that “adult” is the cruelest word in the English language I am reminded of Brakhage’s seminal writing on the untutored eye gazing upon the colour green, innocent of the word “green”. Reversing the psychology of the situation, Hoolboom forces us to embrace an innocent time before we had everything shown to us, when we could use words to evoke rather than limit the image, or at least the idea of the image. We are left exhausted and awakened, eyes opened wide with a renewed sense of uncertainty about the unnoticed secrets behind the images that make up the world around us.
February 25, 2009

clip from event shot without permission, please don't sue me Mike. Sorry about the substandard audio.

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson at Doyle symposium

This isn't experimental, but I presented this last night so thought I'd put it up on line.

Gerald Saul, presentation of films of Sherlock Holmes at the “Re-Examining Arthur Conan Doyle: An International Symposium” at the University of Regina, Friday November 7, 2008.
Introduction and acknowledgments.
Over the past few months, I have turned my gaze to the film and television adaptations of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. While this is certainly not a comprehensive study of all of the filmed versions and I have omitted the use of Sherlock Holmes as a minor character, I have looked at a fair cross section of portrayals from the past 80 years. I should admit that I am not tremendously interested in the Holmes character within the written stories and I read none of them in my youth. However, I was naturally very aware of who Sherlock Holmes was, the iconic nature of his wardrobe and deductive investigative style was solidly ingrained with everyone I knew through the myriad of filmic representations. He was as big a part of our cultural mythology as Dracula and Frankenstein (whom someone told me may also have been books in the bygone days). It was not until I met (my now wife) Margaret in 1991 that I turned any serious attention to mystery stories and films, as she is a veracious consumer of Doyle, Christie, Hammet, Stout, Chandler and their ilk.
Thus, carrying with me only the cultural stereotype of the Holmes character, but having neither scholastic nor nostalgic ties to the material, I became a consumer of the mystery films. What I discovered was that depictions of Sherlock Holmes do not vary far from what I always understood of him. However, it is the role of Dr. Watson and the relationship of Watson and Holmes which is most interesting. Now I am certain that some of you are already studying this relationship. The books reveal little about the two of them, yet the cinema obsesses over them.
Of course, we must first ask ourselves why is Watson in the story? In the books, he is an intelligent, educated man, trusted by Holmes, who acts as a middleman between the genius of Holmes and the average intelligence of the common reader. He is able to praise Holmes and TELL US how brilliant a detective Holmes is. However, a central tenant of the cinema is to SHOW, not TELL. Here is where the primary shift in the adaptation occurs.
Since Watson is at Holmes’s side, his actions, reactions, and interactions have been used to SHOW the audience the nature and genius of Holmes. The earliest clip I have is from the 1931 feature The Speckled Band in which Raymond Massey’s Holmes runs his contemporary agency like a machine. Watson’s role is to contrast Holmes’ cold, proto-computer nature with his own approachable, humanistic side. Women come to Watson for assurances, intimidated by the heartless Holmes. The pattern of using Watson as a sounding board for Holmes to spin out his deductions and for them to discuss the case is established here. These exchanges are infamously dry, amounting to nothing more than exposition contrary to the “show, don’t tell” strategy cinema attempts to maintain. The Speckled Band’s German influenced filmmakers finds an intriguing visual approach to this scene, using superimposed images of the characters discussed, but dramatically the role of the scene remains the same.
In 1932, the Sign of Four begins the rapid, downhill slide for the Watson character. Notice his blank stare in contrast to Holme’s intelligence and focus. Watson, in
addition to being a device for exposition, demonstrates Holmes’ intelligence through his own lack of such. The pattern is quickly established that Holmes proves his deductive prowess to Watson’s amazement. It seems that the filmmakers have decided that the dumber Watson appears, the smarter Holmes appears in contrast. Reaching the pinnacle of incompetence in the popular and well renowned series of films with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, Watson is a blithering idiot, his mouth hanging open and he’s never able to comprehend his colleagues conclusions. While these films were highly significant in establishing the Holmes mythology as a genius, it also places Watson as the proverbial fool. It was here where I always doubted the relationship of Holmes and Watson. While supposedly a competent doctor and world traveler, Watson is reduced to comic relief. How could Holmes tolerate living with and partnering with such an ass? Could his ego be so big that he’d want such an incompetent near him all the time to win bets from?
In the half hour British television series produced from 1954-1955, Watson becomes less oafish but continues to be intellectually limited. In these short episodes, the dialogue and occasional voice-over narration are important short-hand devices for story exposition. Otherwise, Holmes and Watson seem to behave like co-workers rather than roommates, let alone best friends.
From Hammer Films, a company best known for its lurid horror films, the 1959 version of The Hound of the Baskervilles presents a bold and dynamic Holmes played by Peter Cushing and a Watson whose dialogue seemed trimmed to the bare minimum and a performance, by Andre Morell, where he acts only as an observer, standing in for Holmes when he is absent, standing by his side when Holmes is present. Emphasizing Holmes adventurous side, Watson remains highly neutral. He is there as an accessory to complete Sherlock Holmes, but his role remains unobtrusive. I would suggest that the non-presence of Watson was an attempt to have audiences take Holmes serious again, cutting off the comic relief but not knowing what else to do with the character.
After nearly two decades in which Sherlock Holmes appeared rarely as anything but a parody, came the 1978 Canadian production of Murder by Decree. Audiences, although tainted against the character, remained aware of the Holmes genius and this deductive method; his character could not be reinvented. However, Dr. Watson, whose personality in the original stories was less clearly defined, was ripe for renewal. In this new story, Holmes and Watson are on the trail of Jack the Ripper. Finally Watson is able to think for himself and is revealed to have a better instinct for human nature than the detective; Watson takes action in situations where Holmes had less aptitude such as rallying a theatre audience to support the royal family. Holmes and Watson seem, for the first time, to be a well suited team in which Holmes has the intellect and Watson the heart. The conflict between the two reveals their differences, their failings, and their mutual dependence. The clip you will see from this film shows the recurring motif with Watson where he is more connected with food and human comforts than Holmes. I found this arose in many of the adaptations.
1991 brought us another Holmes and Watson, Christopher Lee and Patrick MacNee in BBC’s Sherlock Holmes the Golden Years. By casting two veteran actors of more-or-less equal stature, the story became a sort of buddy picture with the team of Holmes and Watson behaving like an old married couple, knowing each other much too well, squabbling and chasing after their lost youth (and a large stolen diamond). This
became more of a celebrity vehicle and lacked production values or a decent script. In the end, it did little to advance the myth or the genre.
To me, the most astonishing Holmes screen adaptations came from the BBC television series staring Jeremy Brett and David Burke. This series ran from the mid-80s to the mid-90, adapting most of the Doyle stories to the screen. While generally remaining accurate to the original text, a combination of good directing and performance brought a complex layer of subtext to these versions. These versions are not only the closet adaptation to the original Doyle but also contain the most “real” relationship between Holmes and Watson.
For example, in A Scandal in Bohemia, the adaptation retains the scene where Holmes shows the mysterious letter to Watson, asking him to interpret it. Watson makes good progress, reading what he can from the words, the handwriting style, and the type of paper. Holmes continues where Watson leaves off, finding even more discrete clues within the letter. This scene turns its back on the usual Holmes showmanship and demonstrates Watson’s intelligence rather than lack thereof. Holmes proves himself the genius without demeaning anyone, treating Watson as a trusted and intelligent protégé.
I would suggest that whenever Watson is used as a dramatic device for exposition, character defining, or comic relief, the stories invariably succumb to the artificiality that haunts the edges of cinema. With a relationship we can believe in place, the stories, regardless of how artificial they may seem, are imminently more believable.
This evening we will watch The Naval Treaty from this series in its entirety. While I have always believed that filmmakers should have license to modify and revise stories that they are adapting to screen, I cannot help but applaud the closeness of these dramatizations. I am impressed with them on many levels, from writing to acting to direction to art direction. You are brought into the world of Sherlock Holmes. These films do credit both to the producers of the films as well as to Doyle, clearly showing off the fine crafting of his stories. I would like to point your attention to the relationship between Holmes and Watson throughout the film. Rarely are they master and servant, nor is one of them definitively superior to the other. Their interplay is complex as we see their respect for each other, with occasional teasing, with trust mixed with uneasiness, with understanding going hand in hand with confusion. This is a portrait of two real human beings who are real friends.
Dr. Watson I Presume? Films of Sherlock Holmes
Presented by Professor Gerald Saul of Department of Media Production and Studies, University of Regina, November 7, 2008
Excerpt from The Speckled Band, 1931,
Holmes: Raymond Massey Watson: Athole Stewart
Writer: W. P. Lipscomb Director: Jack Raymond
Excerpt from The Sign of Four, 1932
Holmes: Arthur Wontner Watson: Ian Hunter
Writer: W. P. Lipscomb Director: Graham Cuts
Excerpt from A Study in Scarlet, 1933
Holmes: Reginald Owen, Watson: Warburton Gamble
Writer: Robert Florey Director: Edwin L. Marin
Excerpt from Dressed to Kill, 1946
Holmes: Basil Rathbone Watson: Nigel Bruce
Writer: Leonard Lee, adapted by Frank Grubber Director: Roy William Neill
Excerpt from Sherlock Holmes Tv series, Case of the Cunningham Heritage, 1954
Holmes: Ronald Howard Watson: H. Marion Crawford
Writer/Director: Sheldon Reynolds
Excerpt from The Hound of the Baskervilles, 1959
Holmes: Peter Cushing Watson: Andre Morell
Writer: Peter Bryan Director: Terrance Fisher
Excerpt from Murder by Decree, 1978
Holmes: Christopher Plummer Watson: James Mason
Writer: John Hopkins Director: Bob Clark
Excerpt from Sherlock Holmes the Golden Years: Incident at Victoria Falls, 1991
Holmes: Christopher Lee Watson: Patrick MacNee
Writer: Bob Shayne Director: Bill Corcoran
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Tv series: The Naval Treaty, 1984
Holmes: Jeremy Brett Watson: David Burke
Writer: Jeremy Paul Director: Alan Grint