The WWII Sherlock Holmes Movies of Basil Rathbone in Germany
Ever since my junior year of college, I’ve had an intense interest in how the 1940’s Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce-starring Sherlock Holmes movies reflect the times. Transported from the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries to the then contemporary 1940’s, Holmes and Watson not only solved crimes, but they thwarted the evil plans of the Nazis as well.
As I studied the era and films for a capstone project for my History major, I learned that these movies were part of a broader collaboration between Hollywood and FDR’s White House, where the government encouraged the film industry to incorporate approved messages and morals into its releases. I turned my work into an essay titled “Sherlock Holmes vs. Hitler: A True Story.” I presented an abridged version of it at a Film & History conference, and another revision was published in the Baker Street Journal.
In all my years of studying this topic, however, I never thought about how those films went over in Germany. Did the Germans even see these movies? If so, when? Today, the Basil Rathbone tribute blog “The Great Baz” has the answers.
marciajessen writes:
It’s no surprise, then, that Basil Rathbone’s Sherlock Holmes films were not released in German theaters during the war years. Even those films that did not feature Nazis as Sherlock Holmes’s foe would have been deemed unacceptable in Germany because Sherlock Holmes was a British hero, symbolic of England.
By the mid 1950s, however, West Germany had a friendly relationship with Great Britain, and German attitudes towards Sherlock Holmes had changed. But, instead of simply releasing the Sherlock Holmes films, Argus Filmverleih put together four composite movies, each of which is made using footage from two of the Universal Sherlock Holmes films.
Please read the whole blog post. It’s very interesting.
I plan to study this topic more in future blog posts.
–Chris Chan
Chris Chan’s first novel, Sherlock’s Secretary, was released on November 3rd. His Agatha-nominated book Murder Most Grotesque: The Comedic Crime Fiction of Joyce Porter was published by Level Best Books on September 7th. His first non-fiction book, Sherlock & Irene: The Secret Truth Behind “A Scandal in Bohemia” is available for sale at Amazon.com and the MX Publishing website, as well as at Book Depository (with free worldwide shipping there). It is also available in a Kindle edition.
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