By suggesting Sherlock Holmes was a fictional vehicle for the brilliant - but unglamorous - Dr. John Watson, Crime Doctor, 'Without a clue' merely tweaks the subtext of Conan Doyle's original stories. Holmes was always the creation of Watson, a receptacle for certain ideals, a certain way of looking at the world: Holmes, within Watson's chronicles, is always complaining about his sidekick's exaggerations, mythologising and inaccuracies, while many adventures are left out, deemed inappropriate for public consumption, i.e. not fitting into the myth. There is an unbuilt conflict in Conan Doyle between 'Watson' and 'Holmes', which is given a twist by the real author's notorious dissatisfaction with his creation, and his many attempts to murder him.
Although Holmes is often seen as the archetypal figure of order, the reassuring interpreter of chaos and crime, he is also a creature of the fin de siecle, a drug-taking, atonal violin-playing, mad-scientist decadent. This duality was the theme of Wilder's masterpiece 'the Private life of Sherlock Holmes', with which this film shares a comic, revisionist tone, and at least one plot twist. Both films emphasise the figure of Sherlock Holmes as a role, something to be played for the public, masking a real person at odds with both role and his society.
In 'without a clue', there is no 'real' Holmes, he is literally a role played by the inept theatrical ham, Reginald Kincaid, the sort of character Vincent Price played in films like 'Theatre of Blood'. The allusion is not gratuituous - both films make the theatre their central thematic motif, climaxing in an old theatre, site of the actor's greatest humiliation, in which he attempts redemption. For Edward Lionheart, this was tragic; for Holmes it is genuinely redemptive as he saves the day as 'himself' (or a role more suited to his own personality), and earns the respect of his creator.
And creator is the word. Another motif running through the film is religion - the mystery and its solution centre on a man who reads the Bible. Watson is a God who attempts to create a man in his own image; like the first God, his Adam is a miserable failure, prey to ever-accumulating temptations. The film's best scene occurs when Watson dies - an eerie, nocturnal scene that moves from misty Victorian Conan Doyle to the metaphysical world of Borges; Holmes the role must live as a man without his creator, in a Godless world. The idea of the bible as a code to be deciphered to solve the mystery is satisfyingly Borgesian too.
These two sets of metaphors - religion and theatre - culminate in the finale, set in the Orpheum, named after the poet who ventured into the underworld (a pun here on hell and the criminal fraternity), host to Kincaid's last performance, 'Shadow of Death', a multi-reference to the Psalms, Holmes himself (one of Basil Rathbone's films) and, again, a whiff of Borges. The ceiling of a theatre, from which Holmes descends, and which constantly defeats Leslie (herself playing a role) is called the 'gods': the lighting by fire and the ultimate conflagration suggest hell.
That this rich stew - about acting; creating; the role of the popular press; the police; the link between detection and voyeurism/misogyny; metaphysics; identity and gender; doubles (after all, Watson the creator, must play a role as the 'dim' sidekick); the Victorian age ('respectable' society's reliance on 'irregular' help from 'urchins'; Watson's strait-laced austerity contrasted with Holmes' indulgence of every appetite) - should result in such a funny film is remarkable. Its true entertainment lies less in the filming (at one stage a boom glares at the top of the frame in a porto-Dogme moment of self-referentiality), the 'economic' recreation of 1900 London, or the tendancy to caricature in supporting roles, or the sometimes ill-advised 'visual' humour, than the two marvellous, gleeful central preformances, Kingsley's clipped, constipated, infuriated genius, and Caine's wonderfully lecherous, hammy drunk.
Although Holmes is often seen as the archetypal figure of order, the reassuring interpreter of chaos and crime, he is also a creature of the fin de siecle, a drug-taking, atonal violin-playing, mad-scientist decadent. This duality was the theme of Wilder's masterpiece 'the Private life of Sherlock Holmes', with which this film shares a comic, revisionist tone, and at least one plot twist. Both films emphasise the figure of Sherlock Holmes as a role, something to be played for the public, masking a real person at odds with both role and his society.
In 'without a clue', there is no 'real' Holmes, he is literally a role played by the inept theatrical ham, Reginald Kincaid, the sort of character Vincent Price played in films like 'Theatre of Blood'. The allusion is not gratuituous - both films make the theatre their central thematic motif, climaxing in an old theatre, site of the actor's greatest humiliation, in which he attempts redemption. For Edward Lionheart, this was tragic; for Holmes it is genuinely redemptive as he saves the day as 'himself' (or a role more suited to his own personality), and earns the respect of his creator.
And creator is the word. Another motif running through the film is religion - the mystery and its solution centre on a man who reads the Bible. Watson is a God who attempts to create a man in his own image; like the first God, his Adam is a miserable failure, prey to ever-accumulating temptations. The film's best scene occurs when Watson dies - an eerie, nocturnal scene that moves from misty Victorian Conan Doyle to the metaphysical world of Borges; Holmes the role must live as a man without his creator, in a Godless world. The idea of the bible as a code to be deciphered to solve the mystery is satisfyingly Borgesian too.
These two sets of metaphors - religion and theatre - culminate in the finale, set in the Orpheum, named after the poet who ventured into the underworld (a pun here on hell and the criminal fraternity), host to Kincaid's last performance, 'Shadow of Death', a multi-reference to the Psalms, Holmes himself (one of Basil Rathbone's films) and, again, a whiff of Borges. The ceiling of a theatre, from which Holmes descends, and which constantly defeats Leslie (herself playing a role) is called the 'gods': the lighting by fire and the ultimate conflagration suggest hell.
That this rich stew - about acting; creating; the role of the popular press; the police; the link between detection and voyeurism/misogyny; metaphysics; identity and gender; doubles (after all, Watson the creator, must play a role as the 'dim' sidekick); the Victorian age ('respectable' society's reliance on 'irregular' help from 'urchins'; Watson's strait-laced austerity contrasted with Holmes' indulgence of every appetite) - should result in such a funny film is remarkable. Its true entertainment lies less in the filming (at one stage a boom glares at the top of the frame in a porto-Dogme moment of self-referentiality), the 'economic' recreation of 1900 London, or the tendancy to caricature in supporting roles, or the sometimes ill-advised 'visual' humour, than the two marvellous, gleeful central preformances, Kingsley's clipped, constipated, infuriated genius, and Caine's wonderfully lecherous, hammy drunk.