Hindsight

Classic kids, or 100 films the kids in your life have to see by 13 or else!

Day 47!  The Hounds of Baskervilles (1939)

How popular is Sherlock Holmes these days?  If you are like me Elementary on CBS is fun, and the PBS Sherlock is techno-fab, but the real Sherlock Holmes and Watson resides in Olde Edwardian England, right?  Yep!  My daughters and I think that Basil Rathbone is the definitive Sherlock, pointed, stern, intelligent beyond every one else, and a man of many costumes.  This film celebrates perhaps the most famous of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories. 

This film is an easy and accessible way to introduce your child (should be at least 9 years old) to the delights of late 1800s literature as represented within cinema.  I first saw this film in the late 1960s, when I was 8 or so.  I went to the Monroe Street library the next day and promptly began my passion for not only all of Doyle's books, but also for this place so far away-England.  The first thing I did when I studied abroad, in London, for a year, was head to Baker street.  See how far a movie can take you!

Media Literacy Skills:  Why are there so many television and film versions of this story still being produced today?  Are there core values within the story, that reflect values of your own?  How did the film makers create sets that looked like England in the late 1800s?

Themes:  Wit, intelligence, fear, legend, myth, deduction.