Main Post 6 - History of Your Chosen Genre

Mystery

Mystery film is a sub-genre of the more general category of crime film. It focuses on the efforts of the detective, private investigator or amateur sleuth to solve the mysterious circumstances of a crime by means of clues, investigation, and clever deduction.

Suspense is often maintained as an important plot element. This can be done through the use of the sound track, camera angles, heavy shadows, and surprising plot twists. Alfred Hitchcock used all of these techniques, but would sometimes allow the audience in on a pending threat then draws out the moment for dramatic effect.

Mystery novels have proven to be a good medium for translation into film. The sleuth often forms a strong leading character, and the plots can include elements of drama, suspense, character development, uncertainty and surprise twists. The locales of the mystery tale are often of a mundane variety, requiring little in the way of expensive special effects. Successful mystery writers can produce a series of books based on the same sleuth character, providing rich material for sequels.

Until at least the 1980s, women in mystery films have often served a dual role, providing a relationship with the detective and frequently playing the part of woman-in-peril. The women in these films are often resourceful individuals, being self-reliant, determined and as often duplicitous. They can provide the triggers for the events that follow, or serve as an element of suspense as helpless victims.

History

The earliest mystery films reach back to the silent era. The first detective film is often cited as Sherlock Holmes Baffled, a very short Mutoscope reel created between 1900 and 1903 by Arthur

Marvin. It is the earliest-known film to feature the character of detective Sherlock Holmes, albeit in a barely-recognisable form.

The earliest true mystery films include The Gold Bug (1910) from France and The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1914). Both are derived from Edgar Allan Poe stories, which is appropriate as Poe created detective fiction as well as the first private detective character, C. Auguste Dupin. In 1932, Universal Pictures renamed him Pierre Dupin in Murders in the Rue Morgue, an atmospheric horror-mystery starring Bela Lugosi. The film was remade twice more in 1953 and 1971. Poe's second Dupin story, The Mystery of Marie Rogêt, was filmed in 1942.

Charles Dickens' unfinished 1870 novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood was completed by another author and eventually adapted to the screen. Two films, now believed lost, were made in 1909 and 1914. Universal produced The Mystery of Edwin Drood in 1935. The story was remade again in 1993. Universal, known mostly for its long list of classic horror films, also created perhaps the first supernatural horror-whodunit hybrid with Night Monster in 1942.

American author Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876–1958), is credited with inventing the "Had-I-But-Known" school of mystery writing (as well as the phrase, "The butler did it"). Her 1920 "old dark house" novel (and play) The Bat was filmed in 1926 as The Bat, again in 1930 as The Bat Whispers, and a third time in the 1959 remake, The Bat, starring Vincent Price.

Undoubtedly the most famous of the amateur detectives to reach the silver screen was the archetypal Sherlock Holmes. He first appeared in 1903, and has been portrayed in scores of films by a multitude of actors. Perhaps the earliest detective comedy is Buster Keaton's Sherlock, Jr. from 1924. The only American-made series starred Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce as Holmes and Dr. Watson. Together they made 14 very popular films between 1939 and 1946. The first two, at 20th Century Fox, were period piece mysteries set in the late-Victorian era of the original stories. By the third film, Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942), now at Universal Studios, Holmes was updated to the present day. Several films dealt with World War II and thwarting Nazi spies.

Other famous literary sleuths who were brought to the screen include Charlie Chan, Ellery Queen, Nancy Drew, Nero Wolfe, and Agatha Christie's Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot. To date, 32 films and dozens of television adaptations have been made based on Christie's novels alone. British private detective and adventurer Bulldog Drummond was featured in no less than 24 films from 1922 to 1969 and was the prototype for Ian Fleming's James Bond character.