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FILMS Part 1 |
Detective-Mystery Films Part 1 | Part 2 | Examples
Filmsite's related Greatest Plot Twists, Spoilers, and Surprise Endings. Detective-mystery films emphasize the detective or person(s) (an amateur, a plain-clothes policeman, or a PI - Private Investigator) solving the crime through clues and exceptional rational powers. The detective studies the intriguing reasons and events leading to the crime, and eventually determines the identity of the villain (a murderer, a master spy, an arch fiend, an unseen evil, or a malignant psychological force). The central character usually explores the unsolved crime, unmasks the perpetrator, and puts an end to the effects of the villainy. Suspense is added as the protagonist struggles within the puzzle-like narrative to gather evidence and testimony, to investigate all motives, and to discover the one essential clue or fatal flaw/alibi that betrays the identity of the culprit. The detective (or main protagonist) often succeeds in cleverly trapping the killer or criminal where law-and-order officers and local police officials do not. Intensity, anxiety, and suspense build to an exciting climax, often with the detective (or protagonist) using his fists or gun to solve the crime. This genre has ranged from early mystery tales, fictional or literary detective stories, to classic Hitchcockian suspense-thrillers to classic private detective films. A related film sub-genre is that of spy films. If detection and the solution to a crime are not central to a 'mystery' film, then it blends into other genre film types, such as horror or suspense-thrillers. The Earliest Mysteries: Mysteries had their start in the early days of silent film. The most primitive serials, such as the well-known The Perils of Pauline (1914), possessed a degree of mystery. This film type blossomed as a full film category in the talking films of the 1930s, often borrowing from characters in popular literature. Detective films were widely popular during the 1930s and 1940s in B-series films. Sherlock Holmes Films:
Holmes solved mysteries in hundreds of films with "elementary deductions" and with assistance from 221-B Baker Street sidekick assistant Dr. Watson. Their setting in 19th century England was updated in 1942 to the World War II era, with Holmes battling the Nazis. The only actor to have played both Sherlock Holmes and his assistant Dr. Watson was Reginald Owen (see below). The immortal, prototypical detective first appeared on the film screen in a 30-second, 1900 one-reeler (registered in 1903) from American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, titled Sherlock Holmes Baffled (1900). It was the first recorded detective film on record, made specifically for one-person mutoscope viewing machines in amusement arcades. Between 1921 and 1923, actor Eillie Norwood played the Sherlock Holmes character almost 50 times. Another of the earliest Holmes films was Albert Parker's silent 9-reeler Sherlock Holmes (1922) with John Barrymore. The first talkie Sherlock Holmes film was The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1929) with Clive Brook in the sleuthing lead role. He was also popularly portrayed by many actors in the 1930s, including:
Arthur Wontner portrayed Holmes in 5 films from 1931-1937:
Basil Rathbone's 14 Sherlock Holmes Films:
Other Sherlock Holmes Variations:
The half-hour British-made TV series of 1954-55 (of 39 half-hour episodes produced in France with an all-British cast) starred Ronald Howard as Holmes and Howard Marion-Crawford as Dr. Watson. The made-for-TV movie The Hound of the Baskervilles aired on ABC-TV in early 1972, with Stewart Granger as Holmes. Christopher Plummer starred as Sherlock Holmes in John Davies' UK/Canada TV film Silver Blaze (1977). Sherlock Holmes also appeared in various TV episodes: in the cartoon series Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, in the animated TV series Batman: The Brave and the Bold, and in the TV drama series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. The TV-movie/pilot Sherlock (2002) starred James D'Arcy as Sherlock and Roger Morlidge as Watson. Another modern, updated BBC-TV series composed of three feature-length episodes, Sherlock: Season One (2010) found the sleuths (Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman) solving crimes in present-day London. Curious Adaptations of Sherlock Holmes:
Most recently, the adventures of Sherlock Holmes have been portrayed in a pair of director Guy Ritchie action films, starring Robert Downey, Jr (as Holmes) and Jude Law (as Dr. Watson):
Foreign Sleuth: Charlie Chan
Detective Charlie Chan was introduced in Pathe's 10-part serial The House Without a Key (1926) - portrayed by Japanese actor George Kuwa. The second screen appearance was in Universal's and German director Paul Leni's The Chinese Parrot (1927), with Japanese actor Kamiyama Sojin in the lead role (the film was remade as Charlie Chan's Courage (1934)). The first sound Charlie Chan film was Fox's Behind That Curtain (1929), with Korean actor E.L. Park as the sleuth.
The series continued, with less noteworthy quality, with American actor Sidney Toler (1938-1947 in 22 appearances), and American film and TV character actor Roland Winters (1947-1949 in 6 films) as the sixth and last screen Chan. Fox was responsible for the Chan films from 1929-1942, followed by Monogram (from 1944-1949). Charlie Chan also appeared on TV in 39 half-hour episodes, The New Adventures of Charlie Chan, during 1957-58:
Foreign Sleuth: Mr. Moto
Mr. Moto was resurrected 26 years later, to compete with the popular James Bond action series, with Caucasian actor Henry Silva as the quizzical Moto, in The Return of Mr. Moto (1965). The Thin Man Series:
On television, Peter Lawford and Phyllis Kirk starred as the couple in 72 30-minute episodes, beginning in the fall of 1957. Bulldog Drummond:
Nancy Drew: The adventures of 16 year-old, quick-witted sleuth Nancy Drew, adapted from the series of mass-produced books from Edward Stratemeyer and his daughter Harriet S. Adams (with nom de plume Carolyn Keene), became the subject of four Warner Bros. films in the late 1930s, starring teenaged actress Bonita Granville:
Boston Blackie: Columbia Pictures presented thirteen low-budget installments of another detective series (from 1941 to 1949) titled Boston Blackie, starring square-jawed Chester Morris in the lead role as a former jewel thief/con artist who reformed himself and turned detective. The series was based on the 1910 book by Jack Boyle, and the wise-cracking character first appeared in various silent era versions:
The mass-produced films were:
On television, there were 58 half-hour episodes in a 1951 Boston Blackie series, with Kent Taylor as the sleuth. British Detectives - The Saint: One of the most popular, long-running mystery film series of the late 1930s through the early 40s featured the Saint, a mysterious, sophisticated, and debonair British detective named Simon Templar. The half-crooked sleuth, a rogue-turned crusader for Scotland Yard, was derived from Leslie Charteris' popular crime novels of the late 20s. Eight films (of the nine films) in the 15-year long series were from RKO, with one entry from Republic in 1943. In the first and last Saint films, Louis Hayward played the role of Simon Templar. The other two actors were George Sanders and Hugh Sinclair:
On television in the British-made series of hour-long shows in the mid-1960s, Roger Moore portrayed the worldly traveler. British Detectives - The Falcon: Another hardboiled detective, a suave and sophisticated sleuth named the Falcon, was featured in another RKO series during the 1940s - almost a carbon-copy of RKO's former Saint. The debonair and aristocratic Falcon character was taken from Michael Arlen's detective stories. In six years, there were 13 black and white films in the RKO series. Various actors portrayed the Britisher (named Gay Falcon, Tom Falcon, and Mike Waring) in the 16 Falcon pictures, including the former Saint George Sanders (1941-1942) in the first four, and then Tom Conway (Sander's real-life brother) in the next nine (from 1943-1946). After a two-year break, independent low-budget Film Classics bought the rights to the Falcon, and produced three more entires with John Calvert (1948-49):
On TV during 1954-55, the Falcon (Mike Waring) was portrayed by Charles McGraw in 39 30-minute episodes. Other Fictional Crime Fighters: Philo Vance The gentlemanly, artistocratic, independently-wealthy New Yorker, amateur detective Philo Vance was introduced in the works of Willard Huntington Wright (S.S. Van Dine), first in his 1926 novel The Benson Murder Mystery. Thin Man star William Powell and others portrayed Philo Vance from 1929 to 1947:
Other Fictional Crime Fighters: The Lone Wolf During the silent era, Ben Lyon played the crime sleuth Michael Lanyard (The Lone Wolf), derived from the novels by Louis Joseph Vance. The Lone Wolf invariably was an international ex-jewel thief who also served on the side of the law after a change of heart. The Columbia series was capped by nine performances from Warren William (from 1939-1943) as the upper-class retired crook:
On television, Louis Hayward portrayed the Lone Wolf in 1954's 39-part series (of half-hour shows) entitled Streets of Danger. Other Fictional Crime Fighters: Ellery Queen In the mid-30s, Republic was the first studio to release low-budget films about Ellery Queen, a brilliant amateur detective. These were followed by seven films from Columbia Pictures (from 1940-1942), with Ralph Bellamy and William Gargan in the lead role. The main character, a smart, scholarly and analytical crime-solver, was derived from the late 1920s novels of cousins Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee (who used "Ellery Queen" as their joint pseudonym):
The Adventures of Ellery Queen was a live ABC TV show from 1951-1952 with Richard Hart (and then Lee Bowman) as Ellery Queen. Other actors who starred as EQ in further productions included Hugh Marlowe (in the 1954-57 TV series The Adventures of Ellery Queen), George Nader and Lee Philips (in the 1958-59 TV series The Further Adventures of Ellery Queen), and Peter Lawford (in the 1971 TV movie Ellery Queen: Don't Look Behind You). The made-for-TV pilot film Ellery Queen (1975) (aka Too Many Suspects) was prepared before NBC's one-season show (1975-1976) that starred Jim Hutton as the great fictional detective. Agatha Christie Adaptations: The books of British mystery author Agatha Christie provided a great source for a number of classic detective film mysteries. One was 20th Century Fox's atmospheric And Then There Were None (1945) from director Rene Clair - often remade with Christie's original novel title Ten Little Indians (1965, 1975, 1989). [Clair's book was first published as Ten Little Niggers in the UK in 1939, and then in 1940 as And Then There Were None in the US (the offensive title was changed). It was adapted in 1943 by the author and titled Ten Little Niggers in the UK for its stage opening in 1943. It was retitled Ten Little Indians for its US stage opening in 1944. In further film versions, UK's Seven Arts Films moved the setting to a remote mountain top castle in the Austrian Alps and released the film as Ten Little Indians (1965). Avco-Embassy, Inc., produced a third film version titled Ten Little Indians (1975), with the setting in a remote hotel in the Iranian desert. In its fourth incarnation titled Ten Little Indians (1989), Breton Films moved the locale to an African safari.] A four-character short story by Christie was made into a London/Broadway stage hit and was filmed by famed director Billy Wilder as Witness for the Prosecution (1957). In the 1960's, there were four Agatha Christie-related adaptations featuring Miss Marple as a gray-haired, wily, spinsterish detective, played by Margaret Rutherford:
Hercule Poirot - Master Sleuth: And in the 1970s and 80s, there were a few screen who-dun-its derived from the works of Agatha Christie with all-star casts, featuring Christie's colorful, insufferable, meticulous and fussy Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot. The films included:
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Detective-Mystery Films are usually considered
a sub-type of 
Sherlock
Holmes, the world's first private detective, was derived from Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle's works (his first SH novel was 1887's A Study
in Scarlet (1887), followed by three other novels and 56 short
stories). The Baker Street sleuth became the fictional character most frequently
recurring on the screen. He has appeared in over 200 films since
1900 and been played by well over 70 actors.
Its
most familiar, popular figure was the British actor Basil Rathbone
with an Inverness cape, deerslayer hat and curved-stem calabash
pipe (accompanied by dull-witted, pipe-smoking Nigel Bruce as Watson
- who wasn't so clumsy and buffoonish in the original writings),
who appeared during the war years in 14 pictures from 1939 to 1946:
Short
who-dun-its in the 1930s and 40s featured the B-movie, Canton-born, Honolulu-based
Oriental sleuth Charlie Chan, derived from Earl Derr Biggers' works, and based
on real-life Hawaiian cop Chang Apana (very unlike the movie version). The
round-faced, meticulous sleuth was one of the screen's most prolific detectives,
with 46 Chan films and one serial from 1926 to 1949. [Charlie Chan was never played on the screen by a Chinese actor.] 
The
character was best played by Swedish actor Warner Oland (from 1931-1938 in
16 films), who portrayed Chan as a dapper fellow who was always polite and
unassertive but nevertheless was solving the crime using physical evidence
and logical deduction. The sly, composed Charlie Chan would eloquently spout
Confucius-type proverbs, aphorisms, and wisdom in pidgin English, achieved
by dropping definite articles and verbs: ("difficult to catch fly with one
finger," "bad alibi like dead fish - can't stand test of time,"
"Joy in heart more desirable than bullet," "must not too soon
come to conclusion," "Perfect case like perfect doughnut - has hole"
and "silence is golden, except in police station," for example),
always with a courteous, paternalistic, and inquisitive manner. 
To
compete with Charlie Chan, another Far-Eastern sleuth - of Japanese descent,
derived from the I.A. Moto character in Pulitzer Prize-winning John P. Marquand's
novels (which first appeared as Saturday Evening Post serials), was
developed by 20th Century Fox, and named Mr. Moto. Hungarian-born German actor
Peter Lorre (in his 7th American film role) starred in the title role as the
enigmatic, quiet, self-effacing, unobtrusive, spectacle-wearing and brilliant
detective in the eight-film series (produced in less than three years from
1937-1939): 
The
most popular film detectives of the 1930s were a delightful, high-society
sleuthing couple: the inebriated Nick Charles with his wife Nora (and dog
Asta). The characters in MGM's 
Another
literary figure from "Sapper's" (Herman Cyril McNeile) famed detective novels
- Captain Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond - became the featured suave, gentleman-spy
hero in many films mostly made between the silents through to the late 40s.
Drummond battled foreign agents, kidnappers, spies, and other villains during
his adventurous exploits. [Bulldog Drummond was resurrected for a short period
of time in the mid-1960s as a resourceful British agent, during the flurry
of James Bond imitators.] The detective was portrayed by, among others: 
Another
of the best of the late 40s murder mysteries from Britain was director Sidney
Gilliat's film Green For Danger (1947), featuring Alistair Sim as Scotland
Yard Inspector Cockrill. 
