by Brendan Foley
Cinapse Pick of the Week
Exactly what it sounds like, the Pick of the Week column is written up by the Cinapse team on rotation, focusing on films that are past the marketing cycle of either their theatrical release or their home video release. So maybe the pick of the week will be only a couple of years old. Or maybe it’ll be a silent film, cult classic, or forgotten gem. Cinapse is all about thoughtfully advocating film, new and old, and celebrating what we love no matter how marketable that may be. So join us as we share about what we’re discovering, and hopefully you’ll find some new films for your watch list, or some new validation that others out there love what you love too! Engage with us in the comments or on Twitter or Facebook! And now, our Cinapse Pick Of The Week…
There are some premises so simple, so self-explanatory in their potential for cinematic excellence, that when you hear them you slap yourself in the face for not having thought of something so good and so easy. After you finishing icing down your face, you can sit down with this movie and hope that whoever was in charge understood how perfect their idea was, and executed it accordingly.
Sherlock Holmes. Vs. Jack the Ripper.
I mean…come on now.
Directed by Bob Black Christmas/A Christmas Story/Baby Geniuses Clark and written by John Hopkins, 1979’s Murder by Decree finds Christopher Plummer as the world’s greatest detective (suck it, Batman) and James Mason as the erstwhile Watson finding themselves pulled into the elaborate mystery of just who it is slaughtering prostitutes in Whitechapel.
Holmes has been mashed together with just about every genre and subgenre under the sun, from science fiction to the Lovecraft mythos (thanks Neil Gaiman!), and here we find Holmes venturing into out-and-out horror, with Clark porting over his Black Christmas POV tracking shots to tremendous effect, the camera itself stalking terrified women and men as they flee through fog-soaked and lamp-lit streets.
For a good while, the film succeeds largely as a traditional Holmes/Watson mystery. Mason and Plummer make a great team as a capable Watson and a friskier Holmes, respectively, and Hopkins and Clark keep the procedural crackling along at a good clip. But as the film progresses, a darkness begins to manifest itself beneath the frame.
While the mystery is of a nastier, sleazier bent than we might be used to with Holmes (at least, in most modern interpretations of Holmes. Remember, this character was introduced trying to track down a serial-killing Mormon who wrote messages in his own blood), his and Watson’s concern with the street women jibes perfectly with the characters as we know them. Holmes’ understanding that he is himself always one step removed from becoming one of the wretches of the earth, and Watson’s innate decency towards his fellow man lead both to give themselves wholly to the investigation.
And it’s a damn fine mystery. If you are at all familiar with Ripper lore, Murder by Decree is loaded with historical goodies and well-researched clues and theories (if you are familiar with various Ripper theories, then the title is something of a spoiler). And if you aren’t in any way familiar with the case, Murder by Decree does an exceptional job of capturing both the mania of the killer’s spree, and the almost-chemical drive that men like Holmes had to crack the senseless web and see justice done. David Fincher would tap into that same drive with his masterpiece, Zodiac, and Plummer beautifully captures Holmes’ increasing mania as he follows the case into darker and darker territory.
Just how dark the film goes will astonish you. What might, at first glance, be a neat historical fiction ‘What If?’ pushes into a place of borderline nihilism. You know going into the film that Holmes can’t ‘really’ catch Saucy Jack, lest the film go into utter alternative-history. But as the film pushes on and Holmes finds himself bonding with people who we know from history he cannot save, and as he grows closer and closer to a truth that we know cannot bring him salvation, the sadness and disquiet at the edges of the film become an all-consuming horror.
There’s a long strain of these sorts of films, with Coppola’s The Conversation and Pakula’s The Parallax View serving as the progenitors and standard-bearers. These are films that are not about good guys struggling to make sure that right wins out over might. These are films in which there is no right, in which might has already accomplished its victory and puny humans can do nothing but be picked clean from between uncaring teeth. Sociologically, I’m sure you could draw a direct link from the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal to the pervasive rage and paranoia that manifested itself in so many films of such a variety of genres. Or maybe it’s all to do with Charles Manson and his crew slipping into the homes of the wealthy and the comfortable and shattering that ease with a few strokes of a knife. But regardless of the direct, specific source, there was an atmosphere in the cinema of the ’70s that the game was up and the war was lost, thanks for playing and go home.
Put it to you this way: Don Siegel’s Body Snatchers ends with a warning that you are next. In Philip Kaufman’s remake, they have already got you.
And so it goes with Murder by Decree. Holmes cannot win this fight. He never even stood a genuine chance, and Hopkins’ script is merciless as it cages Sherlock and strips him to his core, until Plummer is left literally speechless against the brutality of what he has witnessed. The cynicism is all the more potent as Clark is sure to costume Plummer and Mason in the traditional outfits of their characters, deer-stalker and all. This is the Holmes you have always known and loved, the film says, and this is what becomes of him. It’s a brutal ending, a brilliant ending, and it seals Murder by Decree as an under seen classic.
Technically, the film is well-assembled. Cinematographer Reginald Morris turns 19th century London into a living nightmare, and the film has a lived-in texture that many other period films lack. The music by Paul Zaza and Carl Zittrer nicely amplifies the horror-movie atmospherics.
Murder by Decree comes to us from over 30 years ago, but there’s a potent rage at its heart that makes the film feel immediate even today. Sherlock Holmes’ need for the truth reveals to him a reality that he can only recoil from it.
What would such clarity inspire in you?
Murder by Decree is available to stream on Amazon.