It’s 1932 and Arthur Wontner in the third of his five Sherlock Holmes movies.  His earlier outings, filmed in 1931 and earlier in 1932, are not available in this DVD set that I have available.  This third movie is the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle classic – The Sign of Four.

Yes, it’s the one in which Dr Watson finds his future wife and, yes, in this version he does propose and she accepts.  That’ll put paid to those rumours about Holmes and Watson “living together” and what they got up to on those cold winter evenings while Holmes was fiddling!

Wontner’s Holmes looks a little more like you would expect Holmes to look but in stature he’s somewhat shorter than Watson which is a little jarring.  His mannerisms, expressions, and vocal enunciations put you in mind of Frank Muir and does take some getting used to.

Dr Watson is played by Ian Hunter and is so far removed from the bumbling Nigel Bruce type that his near infatuation (well, for the 30s!) with Mary Morstan is much easier to believe – even though he does come across as being a little too young to be the war vet.

The story remains pretty faithful to the original Conan Doyle tale and, in fact, it plays out like a non-Holmes style movie for the first third.  We’re treated to all the background stuff about what the “sign of four” means, the treasure, the treachery, the murder, all of that happens before we even meet Holmes and Watson.  There’s very little detecting work for Holmes to do but what he does is done exceedingly well.  At work in the Sholto study where they find the body of the dead brother is almost Brett-like in Holmes’ analytical intent.

The only real downfall is that Wontner has such lengthy monologues to give and this is filmed in the traditional “theatre with a camera” method, which results in Holmes apparently losing track of what he’s saying for a half-second before picking up the thread again.  All perfectly forgivable given the era, and it could even be explained away as being a quirk of Holmes’, but it’s still noticeable.

The DVD transfer is a little worse for wear.  The audio quality is down there with Raymond Massey’s The Speckled Band – static and noise everywhere, making some of the dialogue difficult to hear.  The video quality is also on a par with Massey’s – almost worse, in fact.  Fortunately there are no noticeable drop-outs this time around so the story flows together reasonably well.  As it sticks fairly closely to the original novel, it’s an easy film to follow for anyone who wants to see an early adaptation of The Sign of Four.