“Sherlock Holmes” and “Dr. Watson”
In the 1985 delightful East German children’s film Operation Violin Case (Unternehmen Geigenkasten, dir. Gunter Friedrich), young Ole finds himself in a hospital bed with a broken leg after crashing during an attempt to fly using a kite as wings. His father begins to lecture him on the need for scientific theory: “You can’t just run off and try to fly like that!” he tells his son in exasperation. Ole, having heard too many of these speeches, turns to the hospital television and discovers a German-Austrian version of a Sherlock Holmes movie, the 1937 mistaken-identity comedy The Man Who was Sherlock Holmes (Der Mann, der Sherlock Holmes war, dir. Karl Hartl). Ole has found his next passion: solving crimes.
“Holmes,” theorizing about the case
Back home, he assigns his friend Andreas the role of Dr. Watson, and the two set of to solve mysteries – with the appropriate props, of course, including “Holmes’s” pipe, violin case and hat. It is not so easy to find crimes, though, with so many honest people around. Then they witness a bicycle accident, and Andreas notes that the harried cyclist not only refuses help but is also wearing a fake mustache. Clearly the man must be up to no good, a suspicion confirmed quickly when they find “Mr. Neumann” loading electronics into a van. The police meanwhile have put out a bulletin on a van full of stolen goods worth 10,000 East German Marks, and Ole and Andreas talk their classmates into skipping the first hour of school to help find the criminal. When that action fails, it is up to Holmes and Watson to solve the case, even if no one takes them seriously.
Neumann kidnapping Ole
They do, of course, catch Neumann in the act, but he sees them as well and kidnaps Ole. Andreas informs the police, finds his friend, and the police find Neumann. The two boys are sent home to their agitated parents, awaiting punishment for skipping the entire school day and acting outside of the law. In an attempt to teach his son a lesson and perhaps keep him busy and out of more trouble, Ole’s father has decided that violin lessons are in order. The irony of pushing his son further into the Holmes character is lost on the adults, but not on the boys or on the cinema audience. The police officer who arrives at the house deciders that further discipline is unwarranted. He warns against not involving the police in further “detective mysteries,” but then proclaims that the boys have helped protect socialist society against those who would undermine it and presents the boys with a medal.
Despite the clear nod to socialist values, including black market activity as one of the worst imaginable crimes against the state, the film is impressive in its universal appeal as well as its references to German filmmaking. No ones finds it odd that two boys decide to imitate characters in a film made during the Nazi era about two detectives pretending to be Holmes and Watson. This aspect of Operation Violin Case suggests that the 1937 film appeared on GDR television often enough to be an obvious reference and points to an acceptance of two British literary icons who lived a rather bourgeois lifestyle. The tension between judging individual actions against a responsibility to act as part of the socialist collective is also central to the film’s moral; here, again, a children’s film serves as a vehicle for communicating a socialist value system through the presumed innocence of children. Boys will be boys, after all, which is fine as long as they grow up into law-abiding socialist men.