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There
could be no doubt about the beetling forehead, the sunken animal
eyes.
Again, Watson emphasizes Selden"s "beetling"--or Neanderthal--brow
and his "animal" eyes to show that he is a "born" criminal. Perhaps
this is one reason that Holmes and Watson neglect to take much trouble
over Selden"s corpse, while, if it had been Sir Henry"s body, they
might have considered carrying it to the hall.
"My difficulty is the more formidable of the two, for I
think that we shall very shortly get an explanation of yours, while
mine may remain for ever a mystery."
Holmes is right: Watson"s question is answered a few paragraphs
later, while Holmes"s own "difficulty" must wait until the end of
the story for its explanation.
"Sufficient for tomorrow is the evil thereof...."
Holmes paraphrases the King James New Testament: "Sufficient
unto the day is the evil thereof" (Matthew 6:34).
Hound on Film
Out of perhaps 250 films involving
Holmes in some capacity or other, The Hound of the Baskervilles
has been made into feature films at least 20 times since 1914, not
counting the many television versions. Each version has its own
quirks; a few have little or no relationship to the book. Multiple
versions exist in English, German, French, Italian, and Russian.
British silent film actor Eille Norwood, who has the distinction
of having made more Holmes films than anyone (47, in all), starred
in a 1921 silent version of Hound. His Holmes, forced to
speak only through caption cards, was also slow-moving and deliberate,
because Norwood saw Holmes as a man who could not be rattled. (Our
modern Holmeses, such as Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett, tend to
be much more highly strung.) Norwood's films were set in post-World-War-I
England, not in Victorian times, as Conan Doyle would have preferred.
Aside from that small quibble, he enjoyed Norwood"s performances,
and once gave him a Holmesian dressing gown as a gift, which Norwood
wore in the films. Filmed on location in Dartmoor, the Norwood Hound
featured over-the-top acting, typical of the silent film era, plus
a hound whose jowls were--none too successfully--made to look fiery
with scratches on the film.
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Eille Norwood as Holmes,
wearing the dressing gown given to him by Conan Doyle |
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