Movie: The Woman in Green

[amedia]

When TODS re-organized our DVDs we ran across several that we had gotten and then never watched, or started and never finished. One of these was a fun double-movie set with shorts, cartoons, etc., so that it was like an old-fashioned double feature. We watched The Woman in Green, an old Sherlock Holmes movie with Basil Rathbone (or, as my mother calls him, Razzle-Dazzle Bathbone) and Nigel Bruce. I enjoy Rathbone as Holmes, but Bruce is written and directed to play Watson as something of a dim-witted buffoon, which I don't like. TODS and I both wondered how on earth we were supposed to be able to tell that the woman was wearing green, given that the entire movie was in black and white. (It's never mentioned in the dialogue.) Afterwards we watched a set of bloopers from various Warner Bros. productions of 1938, occasionally spotting famous people like Claudette Colbert, Humphrey Bogart, and Ronald Reagan.

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I never liked the portrayal of Watson as a bumbling idiot. It struck me as clear that Watson was a bit brighter than average; it's just that next to Holmes, he naturally didn't look like much. It's no compliment to Holmes's brilliance to say that he outshines a clueless idiot.

[amedia.livejournal.com]

It's no compliment to Holmes's brilliance to say that he outshines a clueless idiot.

Excellent point!