Customer Reviews

Sherlock Holmes - The Master Blackmailer [VHS]

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

For years this was the only Sherlock Holmes mystery in the Jeremy Brett collection that I had never seen. I put off buying it because of the many mediocre reviews I had read. This month I decided to purchase it and finish off my collection. In brief, I was pleasantly surprised. I found it to be a very suspenseful and interesting film. Holmes must bring down a "professional" blackmailer (Charles Milverton), who has destroyed many lives through his tactics. There is much debate over whether Holmes falls in love in the episode. I don't think so. In order to infiltrate the Milverton household, he disguises himself as a plumber and, in the process, draws the romantic attraction of the house maid. They have a couple of "romantic moments" together, and even kiss at one point. However, although the maid is attracted to him, I don't think Holmes was truly attracted to her. It was merely an act as part of his undercover operation. Needless to say, he breaks the girl's heart. At the end, he even says there are aspects of the case that he was not proud of. This was no doubt one of them.

But I would definitely recommend this film. It is more dramatic and suspenseful than other Sherlock Holmes episodes, and the acting is fantastic. And even though it is close to 2 hours in length, it will keep your attention throughout.

There is nothing wrong with this one. It is much better than lots of them. For some reason lots of peple don't like it. Jeremy Brett is perfect in this one. Even of his illness he was perfect for therole. He acted fine even though he was ill. The actor who played Watson is even good! This film is good. There is nothing wrong with it!

I love Jeremy Brett and I love the Sherlock Holmes stories. I really love many of Jeremy's performances as Holmes. But not all and sadly not this one. It's not really the acting, it's the screenplay. Granada was in its artsy phase I guess and took quite a few liberties. I'll admit I was intrigued by "the kiss" between Holmes and the maid, but the way it was staged was just awkward and totally out of character for Holmes. All in all I think the early Granada episodes such as those from "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes," or "The Return of Sherlock Holmes" are where Jeremy really shines.

THE MASTER BLACKMAILER is arguably the best of the five feature-length Sherlock Holmes films made by Grenada TV. It lacks the convolutions of THE LAST VAMPYRE, the occasional sluggishness of the THE SIGN OF FOUR, the weird mystical elements of the THE ELIGIBLE BACHELOR, and the overly experimental cinemetography that undermined the otherwise excellent HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES. The story shoves Holmes out of his comfort zone of cold deductive reasoning and poses with brutal frankness the old Nietzscheian question: 'How many lines can the hero cross before he becomes a villain himself?'

BLACKMAILER pits Jeremy Brett's Holmes Edward Hardwicke's Watson against
Charles Augustus Milverton, their most formiddable opponent since Professor Moriarity. As the name suggests, Milverton, played with sniggering, loathsome villainy by Robert Hardy, makes his living obtaining compromising information about London's elite and threatening to ruin them unless paid fortunes in hush money. His long history of blackmail has left a wreckage-trail of scandal and suicide all over Victorian England, but his precautions are so thorough, and his intelligence so keen, that his victims have no choiue but to pay up or endure the consequences.

When Lady Eva Brackenwell becomes Milverton's next target, however, she employs Holmes to recover old love letters which, if made public, will foil her upcoming marriage to a young lord. And herein lies the story's main departure from formula: instead of a conventional mystery for the consulting detective, we have a problem better suited to a noirish private investigator. How can Holmes prevent a master blackmailer from spilling his illicit goods with the wedding only a few days away?

The late and extremely great Jeremy Brett always played Holmes as being either a bit less or a bit more than human depending on his mood and the case at hand -- he was often ill-tempered, arrogant, bad-mannered, and insensitive to the point of cruelty, and even in his best moments he seemed to be approximating human feelings rather than actually experiencing them; yet he was also courageous, brilliant, dogged, loyal, and imbued with a fierce sense of justice and a terrifying resolve to see the mystery solved and the evildoer punished. It is this last category that the writers chose to explore in BLACKMAILER, in which an increasingly desperate and frustrated Holmes finds himself posing as a plumber and seducing (in chaste Victorian fashion) Milverton's naive housekeeper, Agatha, so as to gain access to Milverton's home. To what extent Holmes feels anything for Agatha, if at all, is unclear, but Brett's subtle acting shows that while Holmes may not be capable of experiencing affection, he is certainly capable of feeling shame -- shame encouraged by a disgusted Watson, whose gentlemanly sense of honor is revolted at this ultraMachiavellian move.

Hardy's Milverton, far from being a foil for Holmes' genius, proves to be a full match for our hero, who grows to hate his antagonist and finally throws aside the subtleties of espionage for brute force and thievery. The story's resolution, one of the most violent in the history of the series, is simultaneously satisfying and humbling -- in the end, Holmes and Watson serve as little more than accessories after the fact to the world's most unlikely vigilante. The only real down note in the whole production was the decision by the director to edit Inspector Lestrade's role in the story to a glorified cameo -- a potentially classic scene where he is talking to Holmes and Watson about a crime without realizing he is talking to its perpetrators unfortunately did not make the final cut.

THE MASTER BLACKMAILER stands as one of the more disturbing and poignent of all the Grenada TV Holmes outings. Normally it is Holmes who gives the lecture and those around him who are the pupils. Here, it is the detective who learns one of the hardest of life's lessons -- that the means used to defeat evil are often as bad as the evil itself.

+++++

This movie is based on the story "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton" (1904) written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859 to 1910).

This story is about a man, Charles A. Milverton (Robert Hardy), "who prays upon weakness with a smiling face and a heart of marble."

One of Milverton's many blackmail victims, before committing suicide, writes a letter to Sherlock (Jeremy Brett) telling him of Milverton's unscrupulous methods and asks Holmes to find a way to stop him. Sherlock takes on this "most repulsive" case.

The first thing that Holmes' does is infiltrate Milverton's mansion by posing as a plumber. In the process, he becomes close to the housemaid (Sophie Thompson) who has "touched [his] heart." The ethical Dr. Watson (Edward Hardwicke) protests this tactic, feeling that Sherlock has gone to far.

The first hour of this movie shows the damage Milverton has done to his victims while the second hour details how Sherlock plans to put him out of business. The end of this movie is surprisingly violent but unforgettable.

Brett (as usual) does a good job in capturing the essence of the famous gumshoe in his performance. Also watch for the fine performance of Bob Hardy as the blackmailer.

Finally, the costumes, background music, attention to detail, and cinematography are quite well done.

In conclusion, this is a good movie to watch even if you have read the story it's based on!!

(1992; 2 hr; British drama; made for TV; full screen)

+++++

Okay, maybe I'm partial because of my deep and undying love for Jeremy Brett, but I love every video in this series. This one is a little skimpy on Brett-time, and it's not clear who some of the characters are. I think this comes from extending one of the shortest stories in the Canon into a two-hour movie. But if you want to see Holmes as a weepin', kissin' fool, this is the film for you. This is one of the only episodes where Holmes shows anything approaching deep emotion, and I love it just for that. And Jeremy Brett. (Yeah, I know he's dead. If I ever learn how to revive people...never mind.)

This late-era Jeremy Brett is typical of the period; there is a certain style to these later episodes that is quite appeaing. Those who only know the earlier episodes will probably find them unrecogniseable.

"Master Blackmailer" is directed very stylishly. Even though this can be pretentious (like in "The Eligible Bachelor"), in this case I like it. I like the oipening scene where the butler rescues the compromising lketter from the fire (to give it to the master blackmailer of the title). At first all you can see is the butler's employer, with what looks like his shadow behind him. After a few moments you realise that it isn't his shadow - it is the shadow of his butler, projecvted somehow behind him. When the letter is thrown into the fire the shadow seems to reach towards it; a reference to Nosferatu.
This shot can mean many things. Perhaps it means the butler is so close to him that he is barely noticed - that he is invisible (because discreet). Or the shadow could represent the Count's unconscious - he secretly WANTS the letter to be found.

I like the actor who played Milverton too. His mannerisms are very much my image of the fellow from the short story.
Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke are very impressive here.

The episode as a whole is surprisingly close to the original story, despite its odd style and length. The final confrontation between the Countess and Milverton is played out exactly according to the description in the book - movemewnt for movement, word for word - and it's very dramatic indeed!

This program has been underrated, and ought to have a much better reputation. Certainly the good reviews given to its two companion pieces - The Last Vampyre and The Eligible Bachelor - are less deserving! The Eligible Bachelor, especially, I don't like - I think it is pretentious and silly, though I understand what it is trying to say.
The Master Blackmailer is one of the best Holmes episodes of the Jeremy Brett series, and is definitely worth seeing.

Apparently when this episode of the Granada Holmes series was first aired, reviews were not generally good. Many complained it was too much of a departure from the original, Doyle's 'The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton.' Personally, I'm inclined to think comments of that sort are missing the point somewhat: this was an adaptation of one of Doyle's shorter short stories, Granada had been contracted to shoot a 2-hour film - something had to fill the minutes! The approach taken by adapter Jeremy Paul was to build in back stories for other characters mentioned by Watson in the short story: so, for example, Watson's passing mention of the broken engagement between 'Colonel Dorking and the Honourable Miss Miles' is fleshed out, interwoven. Milverton's murderess / assassin is given a name, a past and present... All very sympathetically done.

What carries the day is the acting: Robert Hardy's chilling Blackmailer really makes the flesh crawl; Norma West's Lady Swinstead (aka the murderess), all sadness, beauty, refinement, and barely suppressed passion is a real treat to watch - especially the final showdown with her tormentor. Serena Gordon's performance as bride-to-be Lady Eva Blackwell is also noteworthy: at the beginning, one sees the light-hearted young girl, with barely a care in the world. As the film progresses and she falls under the blackmailer's grip, we see her struggling to 'keep up appearances' for her dashing fiance, the Earl of Dovercourt, whom one senses she does love, but whom more than anything else, she is afraid of disappointing, of failing. Jeremy Brett's Holmes is a touch more contemplative than that of earlier episodes, as Brett was apparently suffering from heart problems by this stage, so there was no more leaping over sofas or throwing himself onto the ground, but he still manages to convey the master detective's intensity, his loathing of blackmail, and his determination to succeed (by criminal means and by deception if need be).

The 'kissing scene' is well-covered elsewhere, so I won't say too much here: in my view, it's a beautifully layered performance. Certainly when Sophie Thompson's Aggie (the housemaid) flings her arms around 'her plumber' 'Escott' and demands a kiss, one has to smile as the usually debonair, cocksure plumber with the raffish smile and eye for the ladies, suddenly hesitates and seems unsure what to do with his own arms! One senses there that Holmes has strayed somewhat inadvertently into hitherto uncharted waters and is slightly out of his depth; that the rather pathetic 'I don't know how [to kiss]' is Holmes talking rather than his plumbing persona; and that whilst the master detective never quite loses sight of his object, and pumps Aggie ruthlessly for information right up to the end, it's a pretty close-run thing and he really had to 'plumb his own [emotional] depths' (Escott's motto is 'we plumb the depths') to pull it off! OK - so there's no mention of a kiss in Doyle, nor any indication that if there had been, Holmes felt remotely guilty for misleading an unsuspecting young woman. One assumes that he retains his self-assured detachment even when he has to play the lover. But one could argue that the approach the film takes makes Holmes more human and vulnerable, when he might otherwise be at his coldest and least likeable. I mean - burglary for the greater good is one thing, but cold, calculated misleading of unsuspecting young woman's affection? A Victorian readership might have shrugged it off to say that 'trifling' with a housemaid's affections doesn't count, but today's audiences might find it harder to stomach. So seeing Holmes at a bit of a loss and getting somewhat more than he bargained for redeems him somewhat!

The only black mark I would put against this film is the omission of the final scene from the story: the morning after Milverton's murder, Lestrade calls at Baker Street. Milverton has been murdered, he tells Holmes and Watson. The murder was a particularly brutal one, he says, and the murderers (there were two sets of foot prints, he explains), burned all the deceased's papers, although nothing else was taken. One of the servants had been able to give a very clear description of the second man. Holmes's comment on the description is that it might have been Watson (and of course it was!) - and quite uncharacteristically for the Granada series, which is not short on humour, it is completely missed out! I wonder why?

It's curiously lyrical. It wasn't Directed so much as it was Conducted. Especially the final confrontation between The Veiled Woman and Milverton with its counterpoint/overlay of dialogue "duet."

Cinematography is wonderful - like a series of paintings. The interesting angles and use of reflections are Director Peter Hammond at the height of his technique. Who else would have thought of doing the ending as an Opera? (Ironically, he appears to have ended his career with this series.)

If you're a Brett fan you have only so many choices. The master blackmailer, filmed late in his career, still holds up. It's a nice story with Holmes flirting, in disguise, with the scullary maid. And outwitting the master Blackmailer.
It's better then The Eligible Bachelor and The Last Vampyre but the best two hour productions are The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Sign of Four.