Talented as they may be, Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law will not be the actors most of us will associate with Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. The honor still belongs to Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, who starred in a series of movies in the 1930s and ‘40s based on Arthur Conan Doyle’s characters.
The entire Rathbone-Bruce collection has been released in a handsome DVD set; recently, a pair of their World War II movies has been issued on a single inexpensive disc, Sherlock Holmes in Washington (1942) and Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1943). The idea of catapulting the Victorian detective forward in time to confront the Nazi menace is rationalized by the opening credit of the first film, with its reference to “solving significant problems of the present day.”
Although filmed on a pinched budget, In Washington has a brilliant cinematic touch worthy of Hitchcock—a microfilm concealed in a matchbook passed unknowingly from person to person at a society party. Also winning the day are the characterizations in even the smallest roles and the little gestures—the meaningfully sinister glance and significant snatches of dialogue that propel the story forward. At the heart of both films is the old married bachelor couple of Rathbone and Bruce, whose crackling chemistry seemed beyond the reach of Downey and Law.
