1. projects

      • Nevermades: Harry Dickson

        Project Description

        HARRY DICKSON, THE AMERICAN SHERLOCK HOLMES

        To mark the end of the 2011 CINECITY Brighton Film Festival we were delighted to present a short story with an intriguing film connection, available to listen here for free on our website.

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        THE RETURN OF THE GORGON features The American Sherlock Holmes, Harry Dickson and is narrated by Black Sifichi. In 2010 in one of CINECITY’s highlight events, Paris-based Black Sifichi with Simon Fisher Turner presented an extraordinary live version of Derek Jarman’s BLUE. Commissioned by CINECITY, THE RETURN OF THE GORGON is available in two installments.

        Translation(c) 2011 by Jean-Marc & Randy Lofficier. All rights reserved.
        You can buy the book at: http://www.blackcoatpress.com

        HARRY DICKSON, THE AMERICAN SHERLOCK HOLMES appeared in a series of books many written by the Flemish surrealist Jean Ray. In a kind of parallel universe, Dickson also lived in Baker Street though his adversaries were often more fantastic than purely criminal and included a hypnotising octopus, zombies, a flame- throwing automaton and a vampiric Buddha.

        The film director Alain Resnais was fascinated by the series of books from the age of 12 and he made numerous unsuccesful attempts to film THE ADVENTURES OF HARRY DICKSON between 1952 and 1966. To match the gothic surrealism of the detective adventures with titles such as The Woman With Four Faces, They Killed Mr. Parkinson and City of Ineffable Fear, Resnais was determined to shoot in a fog-found, dark and rainy London as he felt it had the vital surreal screen presence. THE RETURN OF THE GORGON was one of the three stories that he had in mind to adapt for the screen.

        Planning to shoot in 70mm colour that would gradually evolve into monochrome, surrealist Andre Delvaux was to design the sets and Stockhausen to write the score. For Harry Dickson, Resnais intriguingly con- sidered Basil Rathbonewho first played Sherlock Holmes on film in 1939 but his first choice was Laurence Olivier. However the formation of the National Theatre in 1963 coincided with a planned start date and Olivier couldn’t commit to 17 weeks filming. Peter O’Toole, Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis, David Niven, Rock Hudson and Dirk Bogarde were later all considered. To cut the escalating production costs, the 3 and a half hour script was cut to just over 2 hours but Resnais wasn’t happy with the end result: “A series of fascinating fragments but only fragments, and I couldn’t find an ending.”

        THE ADVENTURES OF HARRY DICKSON was researched as part of CINECITY’S NOT SHOWING AT THIS CINEMA project:
        www.cine-city.co.uk/projects/not-showing-at-this-cinema/