Englands Secret Weapon by Amanda Field

Author:Amanda Field
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Film, WWII, Hollywood, Sherlock Holmes, Basil Rathbone
ISBN: 9780957112827
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2012
Published: 2012-07-19T00:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 35: Holmes’ Edwardian collar worn with a 1940s suit, an indication to viewers that he is still the ‘old’Holmes.

Throughout the film, Holmes and Watson retain elements of a late-Victorian look: at 221B Holmes wears the same smoking jacket he wore in the Twentieth Century-Fox films, then when he goes out, he changes into a Norfolk hunting jacket with half-belt: this tweed jacket, a style introduced in the 1880s but still worn in the 1940s, was essentially country wear. The pressbook for Washington describes it as an ‘up-to-the-minute Victory suit without cuffs’, the Victory Suit being an American invention of the War Production Board, though this one seems more redolent of the Victorian than the 1940s. Perhaps its ‘hunter’ connotations are a way of replacing the item of dress most associated with Holmes - the deerstalker. Early in the film, a light-hearted scene at 221B reassures the audience that, despite the transition to the modern day, Holmes is the same person he has always been. As he and Watson leave the sitting-room, reaching for their overcoats from the stand, Holmes picks up his deerstalker, only to be rebuked by Watson who says: ‘Oh Holmes, you promised’. Holmes picks up a modern trilby instead. The deerstalker remains on the coat-stand throughout the series.

In contrast to Holmes and Watson, the dress of the ‘men from the ministry’ gradually becomes more modern: for example, by the end of the film, Sir Alfred, first seen in wing collar, is wearing a pinstriped double-breasted suit, striped tie and slouch hat. There is therefore a transition to modernity for these secondary characters that cannot be paralleled by a similar transition for Holmes and Watson because the values they represent are rooted in the previous century and this needs to be made clear in their visual representation. Pointer felt that the modernising of Holmes’ appearance was ‘reasonably good’ - by which he seems to mean reasonably plausible, because he adds that ‘the English settings seem to hover uncertainly around the 1920s, as did the men’s clothes’. [84] In considering the ambivalence in the ‘modernising’ of Holmes and Watson, it is worth noting that it is not just the characters’ heritage which pulls in the direction of the Victorian, but the star personae too. Through the two Twentieth Century-Fox films, and the ongoing radio shows, Rathbone and Bruce were already strongly identified with a Victorian Holmes and Watson and both actors were noted for playing in period pieces: of the 20 of Rathbone’s films immediately prior to the Universal series, 13 were costume dramas including three set in the nineteenth century.

The use of costume in Secret Weapon follows a similar pattern to that in Voice of Terror, though all minor characters wear unambiguously modern dress throughout. The start of the film offers a ‘soft’ introduction to modernity in the Swiss bierkeller, and the Victorian touches in the main characters have also been toned down slightly: Holmes still wears an Edwardian jacket but sports a windswept hairstyle that is

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