They Might Be Giants

George C. Scott stars as Justin Playfair, a retired judge who believes that he’s Sherlock Holmes, and Joanne Woodward is psychiatrist Dr. Mildred Watson, who is sent to judge his sanity, in director Anthony Harvey’s 1971 comedy. Playfair embraces the psychiatrist as his own Dr. Watson, pulling her into his elaborate investigation of master-criminal Moriarty, and dragging her across Manhattan in a mad dash for obscure clues. Scott’s modern-day Holmes is part brilliant logician and part big-city loon, putting a magnifying glass to every clue and giving dead-on snap profiles to perfect strangers. But he’s a lonely man whose heart leaps to life when he finds his Watson, a career woman with a wall around her feelings who answers his deductions with psychoanalytic observation. Jack Gilford, Al Lewis, and Rue McClanahan costar as oddball misfits and dreamers who become Holmes’s Baker Street Irregulars. Based on a play by James Goldman, They Might Be Giants celebrates fantasy and joyful madness in a world where normalcy is rather unhinged. The climactic scene is treated as slapstick farce and is somewhat out of tune with the story but it does send the characters through a beautiful leap of faith into pure imagination that leaves the audience to write their own ending. Extras include archival audio commentary by Harvey and film archivist Robert A. Harris, and an archival featurette. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)