“It is not easy to express the inexpressible”, said the man who introduced Dr. Watson to Sherlock Holmes.
Nor is it easy to pinpoint why the late, lamented Jeremy Brett set a standard for portrayals of Holmes.
But for us disciples of observation, inference, and deduction, there are clues:
- The way he made a point, or dismissed an argument with a wave–nay, a flourish–of his nimble hand;
- The mercurial way he transformed himself, before our very eyes, from lanquid, melancholy victim of ennui into the keen, bustling investigator once the game was afoot;
- The economy with which his plastic face registered amusement, contempt, disappointment, irony, indignation, and a dozen other reactions to the imperfection of the human condition.
- The glimpses he gave us of the passion that lurked within the ascetic intellectual.
- Just as a score and more of men played Sherlock Holmes on film before Jeremy Brett came along, there will be others. And we will watch them avidly, for our first allegiance is to Holmes. But even as we do, we will glimpse, out of the corners of our eyes, the ghost of the man who mastered the Master.
Peter Howell.
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