Holmes Sick

I guess I've been meaning to watch They Might Be Giants (1971) forever. It stars George C. Scott as Justin Playfair, a wealthy New York lawyer who thinks he is Sherlock Holmes. His brother wants his money and tries to have him committed. But Joanne Woodward, playing mildly dotty psychiatrist Dr. Mildred Watson, has other ideas.

Scott is clearly Holmes, even though he is living in present-day New York. He can tell all about you from observation. He correctly diagnoses a mute paranoid case - clearly, he is a silent film star.
But on the subject of Moriarty, his arch-nemesis, his deductions get a little abstract - almost mystical. Trash in a "Back to School" bag is the clue that leads him to a school of arboriculture, for example, and a ransom note for "200 grand" leads to 200 Grand St. Moriarty is behind it all, the unseen all-seeing prime mover.

And so our supremely confident mad man leads his socially awkward Dr Watson through the "kooky" side of New York. We meet the misfits, dreamers and romantics, and Holmes gives them all a little something. One great example is Jack Guilford (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum), a librarian in a lovely old building, the Jefferson Market Library (real place). He always helps Holmes/Playfair in his researches, living out his adventure fantasies through him.

Now, Ms. Spenser was raised in the New York suburbs, and she just found this movie painful - too full of the type of people and the kind of stories that you ran into in that particular time and place. I understand that, but to me, it seems sweet, if a little silly. If only mental illness were so life-affirmingly sweet in real life.