回复：【JB版福尔摩斯剧集】Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

以下内容来自Michael Cox. 这些文章大多曾刊登在 Sherlock Holmes Gazette. 推测来自A Study in Celluloid 。
The Naval Treaty
This is one of the most confusing of all the cases and we certainly did not solve all the problems its presents. We stuck closely to the original all the way, a little too closely in some cases.
There is a very curious moment during Holmes and Watson's first meeting with their client when the detective picks up a moss rose and launches into a lecture on religon, the goodness of Providence and the hope to be derived from flowers. Its a charming speech although it doesn't make a great deal of sense and it is hard to understand why Holmes indulges in this sudden flight of fancy.We tossed around various theories but in the end Jeremy Paul shortened Doyle's words slightly and JB ran away with the idea that I wanted to cut the speech altogether. Not at all-but this became an occasion when the actor saw himself as champion of Doyle, fighting his corner against a producer who would not trust the original. As a result in the film we have a third version of the text of which JB gives a full-blooded romantic reading.
We crossed swords again over another section of dialogue. On the train back from Woking, Holmes delivers a piece of philosophy.
'Look at those big isolated clumps of buildings rising up above the slates...lighthouses my boy, beacons of the future. Capsules with hundreds of bright little seeds out of which will spring the wiser, better England of the future'.
Even if we could have found an acceptable railway carriage, it was my belief that you could not put that scene on film without showing the audience what H&W see: the view over Clapham Junction as it as in the 1890's. That was beyond us and I managed to convince JB that Holmes' faith in democracy and the younger generations had to go. He was reluctant to accept this but its odd that when he and Watson arrive back in Baker Street in the film, Holmes chases away 2 street urchins, calling them 'young varmints' rather than 'bright little seeds', but then Jeremy was not an entirely consistent man.
He brought an actors intelligence to the series and that prompted him to unearth a fascinating sub-text in the story. It was Jeremy who noticed that the whole fabric of the story is replete with tensions which derive from the British class system.
We filmed in high summer in the tiny village of Pott Shrigley, which was drenched in sunshine and gave Holmes an excuse to don a cream tropical suit and relax in the Derbyshire hills while waiting for nightfall and his encounter with the villian, an encounter that turned out to be somewhat disappointing because we were in danger of overunning and therefore had to shoot it very quickly and simply. The result is an oddly stylised view of the fight in silhouette and slow motion.
Overall a difficult shoot, but one I look back on with great fondness.


以下内容来自Michael Cox. 这些文章大多曾刊登在 Sherlock Holmes Gazette. 推测来自A Study in Celluloid 。
Solitary Cyclist
This was the first film to be made (in June 83) although it was never intended to be the first in order of transmission. Like many other producers before me, I wanted to get the style of the series firmly established before making the episode on which we would be judged by our audience and the critics. So this film and two others were made before we embarked on Scandal which was to be our curtain-raiser. Each film had to succeed in its own right of course, but these first 3 essays gave us all the opportunity to experiment with characterisation in addition to the visual and narrative technique. So we dug deep into the canon and chose what was considered to be a strong and typical story. Alan Plater had written a straightforward and faithful screenplay-so faithful that I wondered if a modern audience would accept some of the dialogue.
It seemed to me that we were on the edge of melodrama and that some viewers might topple over it into laughter. That was to be avoided at all costs because it would have been fatal to make fun of Doyle's characters. I wanted to present them as he did, as contemporary men and women, sometimes pitiful or grotesque but always real. We discussed this in rehearsal and finally decided to trust the author and the cast, particularly John Castle who played Carruthers, who delivered his lines with such conviction that I never questioned the style of dialogue again.
From the very first scene we seized every possible opportunity to use the exterior set which was built for us and to escape from the sitting room of 221b for the inevitable scenes of exposition and discussion between Holmes and Watson. Later in the episode we set one of those discussions in the barber shop on Baker Street which the design team had provided for visual variety.
In the 40 films which followed, directors became more and more aware of the dangers of repeating themselves in that familiar sitting room. There is a limit to the number of angles from which it can be shot.
Whatever else he achieved in these stories Doyle gave us one of the greatest portraits if friendship in English Literature and we were determined to put that on the screen more faihfully that it had ever be done before. It is a partticularly Victorian relationship, utterly asexual and circumsribed by strict rules, but characterised by loyalty, respect and admiration.
In the first of the flashbacks, there is another example of the way in which the dramatist and actor fleshed out the reality of Victorian villiany. Carruthers accomplice, Roaring Jack Woodley is described in the story as the 'most odious person...a coarse, puffy faced, red moustached young man, who was forver making eyes at Violet when they first meet.' In the film he is given a line which is particularly chilling. When Carruthers mentions his 10 year old daughter, it is Woodley who supplies her name 'young Sarah'. Michael Siberry delivers that line in a way which suggests that Sarah will not be safe from Woodley's attentions for many years more.
Violet's journey to Farnham Station was made more dramatic by the directors assumption that the sharp turning at which she lays her trap for her pursuer takes the road over the railway bridge. As Violet stops to confront the cyclist following her, a train roars underneath and the road is obscured in its steam. When it clears the cyclist has vanished as if by magic. At least it seems that a train road is under the bridge, in actual fact there was no railway and no train, only a smoke machine and a sound effect supplied in the editing process.
The second part of the film comprises Holmes' encounter with Woodley 'a straight left against a slogging ruffian', allowed JB a flourish all of his own. The dancing footwork at the start of the fight was his: the ripple of applause from bystanders when the bully is disposed of was the directors idea.
In our film, Doyle's final paragraph has been expanded into a small domestic comedy in Baker Street. The return of the tobacco experiment with which the story began is picked up here and concludes with Holmes almost setting fire to their rooms, a piece of broad comedy, which in hindsight, I could have done without.


【以下内容来自 A Study in Celluloid 】
The Crooked Man
Dramatised by Alfred Shaughnessy
Designer: Margaret Coombes
Directed by Alan Grint
Supporting Cast:
Henry Wood: Norman Jones
Col. James Barclay: Denys Hawthorne
Nancy Barclay: Lisa Daniely
Major Murphy: Paul Chapman
Miss Morrison: Fiona Shaw
Jane: Shelagh Stephenson
Bates: Colin Campbell
Mrs. Fenning: Maggie Holland
I wonder where Holmes would be today if his appeal depended on some of the less successful stories. Suppose that A Case of Identity or The Veiled Lodger were the best of the bunch instead of the also-rans. Imagine the Baker Street phenomenon if The Crooked Man had been a typical case.
As Conan Doyle tells it, Watson is married and Holmes visits him late one night to describe a murder in the military community of Aldershot. The circumstances are curious but Holmes has already tracked down the most likely suspect and needs Watson as a witness to the man’s confession. Watson agrees to accompany Holmes the following day on this unpromising assignment.
Although Holmes calls it “one of the strangest cases which ever perplexed a man’s brain,” this was not a story that I was keen to do. But John Hawkesworth and his comrade in arms from the Guards and Upstairs, Downstairs, Alfred Shaughnessy, persuaded me that is would provide a change of pace in our first group. In fact the script went thorough several versions before I was prepared to give it to the director. This was Alan Grint, who had already done The Naval Treaty successfully and was attracted by the spectacular opportunities for flashbacks to the Indian Mutiny. I still had misgivings and would have preferred to go with Bill Craig’s script for The Reigate Squires, but I surrendered.
We stood the first part of the story on its head and assumed that Watson--the military man--had brought the case to Holmes. We went on to assume that Holmes would hate all things military “with his whole bohemian soul.” Jeremy took this assumption rather too much to heart and played the early scenes with complete contempt for the army establishment. Paul Chapman, who played Major Murphy, found this a little difficult to understand. You can almost hear him saying, “Why does this man, stalking round my office and checking up on the dusting, hate me so intensely?” which Holmes appears to do until Murphy mentions how well he knows the dead man’s widow. The possibility that he knows her too well makes Murphy a suspect, and Holmes appears to warm to him as a result.
The major introduces the first of a series of flashbacks on which the narrative depends. This is to an Indian bazaar thirty years earlier at the time of the Mutiny. Apart from Margaret Coombes’ ingenuity in creating this exotic setting in the basement of a Manchester warehouse, the most interesting aspect of this sequence is the casting. Barclay as a young man is played by James Wilby, who was to become a distinguished leading actor in British films such as Maurice and A Handful of Dust, and Mrs. Barclay as a young woman by Catherine Rabett, whose name was briefly linked with that of Prince Andrew a year or so later. In 1983 both were prepared to accept non-speaking parts in a TV series.


Murphy’s next flashbacks establish the unhappy marriage of the Barclays and the fits of depression which regularly affected the colonel. Watson confirms that the latter may be no more than the legacy of combat fatigue. Holmes is, of course, more concerned about the Barclay’s marriage but is denied any evidence from the widow because she is in hospital, still in a state of shock. As she lies there she breathes the name “David,” a word which Holmes later says would have revealed the whole story to an ideal reasoner.
For the central section which Hawkesworth/Shaughnessy scripted as a typical investigation, Holmes and Watson travel to the Barclays’ home on a fine, frosty morning. Watson offers an explanation of the colonel’s apparent jealousy of his wife. “Mild adultery has always been commonplace between officers and their wives serving in hot climates”—a line which has always amused me because I doubt if one can be mildly adulterous any more than one can be slightly pregnant. But Major Murphy is effectively cleared of suspicion by the evidence of a wonderfully cool and precise maid. Holmes collects the details of Barclay’s horror-struck death, the missing key and the footprints which point to an intruder and his mysterious companion. Once again Jeremy Brett is athletic, even balletic, as he races across the terrace and lawn.
The next stage is a visit to the Mission at which Nancy Barclay spent an hour with her friend, Miss Morrison, on the evening of the crime. This is a setting which David Burke later said that he found acutely disappointing. In the story Miss Morrison describes how she and Nancy were walking home through a suburban street and by complete coincidence encountered the crooked man who recognizes Nancy and, having spoken to her, is left under a street lamp shaking his fists in the air. Perhaps we should have found a suitable street, cleared it of cars and TV aerials, redressed some houses with Victorian doors and windows, erected a practical period gas lamp and set up an expensive night shoot. Instead we put the meeting into a believable context, the Mission to which the old soldier had come to find some cast-off clothes. I do not believe that very much was lost, and we certainly gained an appropriate location for the crucial evidence of Miss Morrison.
Here again we find the line, “A promise is a promise,” which obviously meant more to Conan Coyle than it did to Sherlock Holmes. In order to save Nancy Barclay’s life, he persuades her friend to break her word and Fiona Shaw delivers the line beautifully. She pauses in the middle and her voice almost tails away, knowing that--however it may be justified--she has betrayed a principle. But then Miss Shaw is a rather special actress, who has since played Electra and Hedda Gabler for the RSC and, in a gender switch worthy of Bernhardt or Irene Adler, Richard II.
The third section of the film is a faithful dramatization of Henry Wood’s story and his explanation of the death of Barclay. It is one of many tales which suggest how the great Victorian imperial adventure poisoned the lives of decent people. I thought that Norman Jones brought a particularly sad authority to his portrait of Wood and that Alan Grint supported him with scenes from the Indian Mutiny which would not have disgraced a feature film. They were shot at Alderley Edge in Cheshire in a cold and wet November. Buried in the budget is the cost of several bottles of brandy, which was completely justified.
Our version of this rather awkward story ends as the original does with an explanation of Nancy’s biblical reference to “David.” It is prefaced by a phrase from Watson which has echoed through the history of the detective story, “…there’s just one thing I don’t understand.” And it is rounded off with a reference to the great unspoken Canonical cliché. At the start of this tale Holmes comes as near as he ever does to saying, “Elementary, my dear Watson.” So it seemed only fair that Watson, having caught him out in a small deception, should be allowed to say, “Elementary, my dear Holmes.” ?

【以下内容来自 A Study in Celluloid 】
The Speckled Band
Dramatised by Jeremy Paul
Designer: Michael Grimes
Directed by John Bruce
Supporting Cast:
Dr. Grimsesby Roylott: Jeremy Kemp
Helen Stoner: Rosalyn Landor
Julia Stoner: Denise Armon
Mrs. Hudson: Rosalie Williams
Thorne: Timothy Condren
Percy Armitage: Stephen Mallatratt
Driver: John Gill
The Speckled Band and The Naval Treaty were the second and third films we made. Both stories were dramatised by Jeremy Paul, who in the end, contributed more of the forty-one scripts than any other writer. He also wrote the hugely successful stage play, The Secret of Sherlock Holmes, in which Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke appeared at Wyndham’s Theatre. Both of these television scripts, as well as the play, have been published in separate volumes by Ian Henry Publications.


As Jeremy says in his introduction to this script, everyone knows this story or at least thinks that they do. I remember a friend saying to me with an ill-concealed yawn, “I suppose you’re going to do the one about the snake.... “ We certainly did and we chose to do it because it is a story which deserves its fame. It features one of the most formidable villains in the whole series, Dr. Grimesby Roylott, a man both violent and cold-blooded, whose confrontation with Holmes in Baker Street is spectacular. Jeremy Kemp, who probably had not played a sympathetic role since appearing as a ** in Z Cars more than twenty years before, was born to portray this particular rogue.


The Speckled Band is one of the most faithful of all the adaptations we made. Our aim was always to be true to Conan Doyle’s stories, but sometimes that meant fidelity to the spirit of the original rather than the letter. In some of the later films in this first series we made significant changes or additions, but in this case we changed nothing. Jeremy Paul fleshed out the scenes occasionally, showing Roylott reading Helen’s letters to explain how he traced her to Baker Street, for instance, and adding a sardonic line for Holmes, “Dr. Watson has also practiced medicine in India,” but the case is intact.
Seeing the film again, so many years after we made it, I noticed how the relationship between Holmes and Watson was growing. The jokes about Watson’s appetite are sustained and the doctor is firmly established in 221B. David Burke was doing exactly what I hoped he would and making Watson a man whose company one would enjoy. Jeremy Brett is perhaps a little waspish and unsympathetic at times, and he was criticised for that. I think it took him some time to find that Holmes has, as Conan Doyle says, “a great heart as well as ... a great brain.” But then Conan Doyle wrote that line in 1925, thirty-eight years after he created Sherlock Holmes.


【以下内容来自 A Study in Celluloid 】
The Copper Beeches
Dramatised by Bill Craig
Designer: Michael Grimes
Directed by Paul Annett
Supporting Cast:
Violet Hunter: Natasha Richardson
Jephro Rucastle: Joss Ackland
Mrs. Rucastle: Lottie Ward
Fowler: Michael Loney
Toller: Peter Jonfield
Mrs. Toller: Angela Browne
Miss Stoper: Patience Collier
For his third and last film in the series, Paul Annett directed this very faithful version of the archetypal “governess in danger” story. The script follows Conan Doyle closely; the setting is a substantial old house near Carnforth, which came complete with sweeping staircase, linenfold paneling and antique furniture. It had everything except the beeches, but we were able to add a sinister touch by saying they were, “Dead, Miss Hunter, mostly dead.” But perhaps the most memorable factor in this film was the choice of the players.
Carolyn Bartlett was the casting director on this particular episode and, together with Paul, achieved two striking successes. They had to cast one of the juciest villains in the Canon and obviously needed a major character actor. When they secured Joss Ackland for Rucastle, we all breathed a sigh of relief: the part was in the safest possible hands. The choice of a leading lady was not so easy. Watson says she has “a bright, quick face, freckled like a plover’s egg, and with the brisk manner of a woman who has had her own way to make in the world.” Well, they did not find anyone like that at all. Instead they found an attractive girl with a low, musical voice and a marvelous combination of determination and vulnerability. She happened to be the daughter of Vanessa Redgrave and Tony Richardson, and we met her just before she flew to Los Angeles on a visit to her father and to have her nose remodeled. She was irresistible and we simply prayed that the new nose would meet our deadline for filming—which it did.
Natasha Richardson also caught the vague, unsettling undertones of the story perfectly. Jephro Rucastle poses no sexual threat to Violet Hunter but, whether he is prowling Miss Stoper’s office or describing his fads and fancies, he is a menacing figure. As Holmes observes, he shares with his son the instincts of a predator. Violet is, of course, an innocent victim, but there is a slightly coquettish quality about her which possibly puts her at risk. Even Holmes himself seems to be mesmerized by that luxuriant, artistic hair.
Paul Annett added his own touches of suspense to the story: Rucastle’s unnerving performance of the jokes with which he entertains Violet, for instance, and the sudden shock of a startled pigeon in the shuttered tower. Our only other change in the narrative was to make Fowler’s rescue of Alice coincide with the arrival of Holmes and Watson and to trap Rucastle into believing for a moment that Violet really is his daughter.
Of all the dogs in the Canon, Carlo probably runs the Hound of the Baskervilles a close second in ferocity. But I have to say that the mastiff who savages Rucastle at the climax was one of the least frightening dogs I have ever met. We provided a stand-in with protective clothing but, in the event, Joss Ackland did not require a double for the crucial scene. He had his work cut out to make a playful romp look even remotely dangerous.
We rounded off the film with a demonstration of Watson’s personality as a storyteller. He obviously enjoys the role hugely and overlooks the long-suffering, quizzical reaction of Holmes. As this moment was shared by the two men we had to lose Watson’s interesting reflection on Violet: “…my friend Holmes, rather to my disappointment, manifested no further interest in her when once she had ceased to be the centre of one of his problems.” Did he really expect Holmes to keep in touch???

以下内容依然来自Michael Cox. 这些文章大多曾刊登在 Sherlock Holmes Gazette. 推测仍来自A Study in Celluloid 。
The Greek Interpreter
Here again is a story with a slightly disappointing ending but its irresistible because it introduces us to Holmes’ brother, Mycroft. This is a character who appears more often in films than he does in the original stories. On this occasion he has a case to put before his brother so Holmes and Watson go to the Diogenes Club to meet him. It was great fun to re-create (at Tatton Hall in Cheshire) Mycroft’s haven for ‘the most unsociable and unclubbable men in town’ with its slippered servants amd air of total silence where ‘no member is permitted to take notice of any other one’. If only it existed in real life!
In the Strangers Room Watson is given another lesson in observation as the brothers take up positions at the window overlooking St James’s Park and compete with each other in deducing the circumstances of passers-by. David Burke’s expression of admiration at this performance is one of the delights of the scene. When Mr Melas, the interpreter of the title, arrives to be introduced to Holmes, JB and Alan Grint our director, worked together to devise that beautifully staged moment when Holmes emerges from behind the bulk of his brother. It seems to mirror the way in which the detective gained recognition in spite of the achievements of his older sibling.
In the original story, after a mysterious Mr Davenport replies to Mycroft’s advertisement and provides vital information about the prisoner, his sister and the house where they are held, our heroes set off in pursuit and are only just time to save the life of Melas. The Greek captive is dead and the villians, taking the girl with them, have flown.
At this point-only two thirds of the way through our film- Doyle’s story ends. ‘And this was the singular case of the Grecian Interpreter’, we are told, ‘the explanation of which is still involved in some mystery’. Which it certainly is and the part played by the girl is one of the most puzzling aspects of it.
Clearly something would have to be done, so after much discussion and debate, we decided to follow the criminals and their victim’s sister as they attempted to leave the country. JB came up with an interesting way of demonstrating Holmes’ deep suspicions of the female sex, by having Holmes glance into the girl’s deserted bedroom and remarking that ‘the lady left in hast but without a struggle’. Considering that Sophy had seen her brother tortured by Kemp and Latimer and yet had left without him, he may perhaps be forgiven.
Taking their cue from an abandoned railway time-table, the Holmes brothers and Watson board the boat train at Herne Hill. I originally had misgivings about Mycroft departing so far from his routine and showing such energy, but remembering that he had acted as Watson’s coachman in another story, I agreed that it was possible.
After Holmes confronts Latimer and Sophy in their compartment, the latter protests her innocence, but Latimer is foolhardy enough to try and escape from the moving train. As he swings from the door of the compartment another locomotive travelling in the oposite direction seals his fate. As Holmes and Watson look on in horror, it was David Burkes idea to grab onto JB’s hand, this little touch wasn’t scripted.
All of this was shot –with the help of a brave stuntman- on the Bluebell Line at Sheffield Park in Sussex. We chose this extravagant location because it offers not only a fine period station but the rolling stock, impeccably maintained by the Bluebell Railway Preservation Society, includes the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway’s directors’ saloon.
At the episodes conclusion, Holmes explains ‘It is not a crime to have a cold heart and not a single shred of compassion’. Where Watson, in his account is prepared to give Sophy the benefit of a slender doubt, Holmes remains a cynic about women.

以下内容依然来自Michael Cox. 这些文章大多曾刊登在 Sherlock Holmes Gazette. 推测仍来自A Study in Celluloid 。
The Norwood Builder
This promised to be a rather expensive episode where vehicles are concerned. We wanted to make the fire at Norwood as spectacular as possible and started to search the country for Victorian fire fighting equipment. Almost at the last moment our production manager discovered that Preston Fire Service maintained a period brigade complete with uniformed volunteers and they were only too happy to make the short journey South and appear in the film. The cost was much more reasonable than a budget-conscious producer had any right to expect.
Another director coming fresh to the series brought a novel idea to Baker Street; the notion of road repairs. He and his designer proved to me that scaffolding and traction engines were actually cheaper than horse-drawn carriages and a throng of pedestrian so they carried the day.
Colin Jeavons makes his first appearance as Lestrade in this film, the most consistent ** presence in an area of casting which was latterly a little confused. It seems hard to call an actor 'a sallow, rat-faced fellow' but Colin really did make a splendid Lestrade.
For the scene where Holmes takes on the guise of a tramp, Richard Harris, the dramatist surmised that he would plunge straight into the disguise in order to penetrate the fellowship of the road, but this presented JB with a problem. He argued that Holmes, away from Baker Street, would not have access to his make-up kit and could not therefore make any elaborate change in his appearance. The very simplest strategy would have to suffice. This meant that Holmes as a vagrant had floppy hair, a dirty face and a strange rural accent. I doubt if Watson or Mrs Hudson would have been taken in.
I still chuckle at that scene at the end where Holmes experiments with the bales of straw and buckets of water. Holmes' assertion that 'we can do better than that. Now full voice and together', always reminds me of a pantomine comedian with the song sheet unfurled. A tribute perhaps to Basil Rathbone and the masterly music hall turn he gave us in his 1939 'Adventures'.

以下内容依然来自Michael Cox. 这些文章大多曾刊登在 Sherlock Holmes Gazette. 推测仍来自A Study in Celluloid 。
The Resident Patient
Whenever I meet fans of the series, they are always eager to know how and why certain decisions were made about the content and method of the films. Why were there no copper beeches in The Copper Beeches? Why was there no night-time street encounter with Henry Wood in The Crooked Man? Any why were there no ‘beacons of the future’ in The Naval Treaty? The answer, as is so often the case with these things, boils down to money.
In 1990, when I produced my last contribution to this series- The Casebook-an hour long film had to come in at an average total cost of about half a million pounds. This figure was determined by the return the company received from a UK network showing, plus any pre-sale overseas. The word ‘average’ is very important here because the producer of a series can often balance his budget by economising on a couple of films in order to pay for a particularly expensive one. He can also juggle expenditure within an individual film, by say, spending less on location filming in order to finance the construction of a new studio set. But there was a limit to the areas of the budget which he could control. The system of ‘total costing’ was introduced into television during the 1980’s, before that, no-one bothered too much about allocating to individual programmes the cost of running the company.
From that point on, however, a programme budget was divided into 3 segments; resources, direct costs and management overheads. The resources, which included the hour by hour cost of equipment and staff, accounted for 25% of the total, there was an overhead of about 8% which left 67% to pay for the unique costs of each film. The allocation of this amount was the direct responsibility of the producer. Its this chunk of money –somewhere between ￡300,000 and ￡350,000 which I am concerned with in what follows.
In a typical budget only about 3% of that sum was spent on the script whereas perhaps 20% would be spent on the cast-not just their fees but, as most actors live in London and our base was in Manchester, their rail fares and hotel bills. If a great deal of location work was involved then as much again would be spent on the travel and subsistence of the crew away from their own doorstep. This figure was always scrutinised most carefully by the accountants because the money spent does not ‘show on screen’. Neither, of course, does the cost of accountancy. The costs that do show on the screen include the set construction (8%), props such as horses and carriages (10%), wardrobe and make-up (6%), and facility fees for the use of period houses (another 6%). There was often a freelance element in the team-the director, designer or their various assistants who also had to be stabled and watered-and this could add a further 10%. All the lighting equipment including the generators had to be hired (4%) and the film stock and recording tape accounted for another 4%. The remaining 10% was swallowed up in insurance, music, research, titles and a very modest amount of hospitality- ‘gratuity to ******man for holding horse: ￡5’ might be an example.


The juggling was endless. An expensive location-and the National Trust used to set the pace by charging ￡1000 a day-might be justified because it came complete with period furniture which meant a saving on the prop budget. The number of crowd artists a director needed for exterior scenes was always a subject for haggling, because they earned ￡50 a day but it cost another ￡50 to provide a costume-even if it was ‘designer rags’-for each one. The ratio of film shot to that eventually seen on screen was always a sensitive issue. Not just because of the cost of stock and processing but because the higher the ratio, the more time is spent in the editing room, sorting out the rushes, the rough assembly and the final cut.
When we began in 83, the schedule for each film was fifteen shooting days plus a week of preparation. Jeremy Brett’s request for an extra week of rehearsals after the first couple of films inevitably cost us money. During the making of The Red Headed League, he complained that ‘Sarasate obviously did not do well at the matinees because there was nowhere near enough people in the audience a St James Hall’, a comment which riled the powers-that-be somewhat.
In the longer run these notes will show how Silver Blaze and The Devil’s Foot made such inroads on the budget that The Hound was fatally compromised.
As all Holmes scholars know, Doyle added a section to The Resident Patient when it was first published in book form. He had decided not to include The Cardboard Box in that The Memoirs collection but was reluctant to lose the impressive mind-reading trick about General Gordon and Henry Ward Beecher which originally appeared in that story. So he transposed it into The Resident Patient which goes to show the importance he attached to these exercises in domestic deduction. They were, of course, a continual challenge to Watson, who was regularly dazzled by his friends’ skill and must have longed to turn the tables. Doyle realised this and when he was asked to contribute a Sherlockian fragment to the library of the Queen’s dolls’ house in 1922, he chose to describe How Watson Learned The Trick.
It is an amusing piece in which Watson attempts to apply Holmes methods and reaches an erroneous conclusion. Quite naturally JB and DB were eager to include just such an exercise in one of the later Adventures films and we chose to do it in this one. I had to rule out Doyle’s own version because it was not in the public domain. Instead we asked our writer, Derek Marlowe, to invent his own and to set it in the barber’s shop on Baker Street which we had built as an alternative setting to the hard-worked sitting room.
Marlowe came up with a sequence which revolves around Holmes grinding his teeth and drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair. Watson assumes that his friend is angry at being banished by Mrs Hudson in the course of spring-cleaning. In fact he is trying to remember the fingering for a cadenza in the Beethoven violin concerto, which he had heard Joachim play the night before. This allowed Patrick Gowers to take the pair back to 221 B with a quotation from the concerto on the soundtrack. David Carson, our director, develops an elegant camera movement, craning up from ground level to the window above until the drawn blind fills the screen, Mrs Hudson releases the blind and, as if by magic, the shot continues inside the room.


Trevelyan’s narrative about his benefactor and the curious practice in Brook Street leads to a climax which is particularly worrying for a television producer. Blessington is found hanged and hanging is the most frequently imitated form of screen violence. No one wants to be responsible for a tragedy and the controlling authorities showed a keen interest in scenes of this kind. In the event they took a robust view and our version of Blessington’s death survived in tact.
JB always showed great enthusiasm for sequences in which Holmes investigated the scene of a crime and had numerous idea's for this piece, many of which we ended up using. If there was a floor to throw himself on or a mantelpiece to climb, he would flare his nostrils in anticipation. He was very fond of the scrutiny of Blessington’s room, not because it presented a physical challenge but because it was played out in complete silence. He called it the Rififi sequence in honour of Jules Dassin’s famous gangster movie in which a burglary lasting 25 minutes is conducted without a sound.
The detective work here is thoroughly satisfying but, as in the story, Holmes is able to explain the crime but neither he nor the ****** force is able to track down the murderers. Watson tells us that they probably died at sea and brings this news back to Baker Street a few days later. He is not exactly overjoyed to find that the wheel has come full circle and Holmes has returned to his study of the Beethoven concerto. He pleads for a little peace in which to chronicle ‘The Brook Street Mystery’. Holmes takes his violin into another room but leaves Watson with a much better title than the rather prosaic one which is already in the doctor’s notebook.

以下内容依然来自Michael Cox. 这些文章大多曾刊登在 Sherlock Holmes Gazette. 推测仍来自A Study in Celluloid 。
The Red Headed League
'For the keen observer, our opening sequence contains an essential clue to the mystery: the proximity of Wilson's shop to the City and Suburban Bank, but we gave nothing else away. The arrival of a valuable deposit is watched by a shifty character who collects a not dropped by an accomplice and delivers it to his employer. At this stage we see only the hands of the employer, but what sinister hands they are, claw-like and rapacious.
The sequence in which Wilson applies for a vacancy in the League is directed with considerable flair by John Bruce. We are told that 'Fleet Street was choked with red headed folk and Pope's Court looked like a coster's orange barrow' which is not an easy image to achieve. We genuinely needed red heads, natural, dyed or wigged, but trade union regulations prevented us from plucking them off the street. As far as I can remember, John was allowed a crowd of only 50 but he deployed them so adroitly from shot to shot that Doyle's scene is splendidly realised.
Wilson's description of Spaulding has convinced Holmes that he is dealing with the elusive John Clay, an aristocrat among criminals. For him, John Hawkesworth added the line 'he was educated at Eton and Oxford, so Watson bring the gun'.
For a British audience it may be distracting now that Richard Wilson, our Duncan Ross, is indelibly associated with Victor Meldrew from hit comedy series 'One Foot in the Grave'. In 1985 he was the perfect foil for Roger Hammond as Wilson, issuing his instructions on the absurd task of copying out the Encyclopedia Britannica. He also has some of the very best dialogue. Comic writing of the highest order
When the League is dissolved, Ross (now no longer red-headed) reports the success of the scheme to the mastermind behind it all. There can be no doubt that this is Moriarty.
When Holmes explains his suspicions that the Professor is behind the planned robbery, we borrowed some dialogue from The Final Problem in order to relay to the audience just how significant a threat this man poses.
After Duncan Ross admits his failure to Moriarty, he leaves looking like a man who has not long to live and as Holmes explains to Watson how he solved the case, on the other side of the street, the Professor observes the man who has done much to frustrate him. For the first time we see that reptillian oscillation of the head which signifies the deep malevolence of Holmes' opponent.'