With the 21st Century’s incarnation of Sherlock Holmes ready to tackle movie screens, the question that nags all literary films will be raised yet again: Who would have been perfect for the role?

Great actors have been trusted to infamous fictional characters in the past, with mixed results to be certain. Perhaps this is because it is one of the rare occasions in the movie industry where the character on the page is larger than the celebrity portraying them. And while Jude Law seems a perfect fit for Watson, and Robert Downey Jr. is a fine actor, their worthiness as the greatest sleuth and inquisitive sidekick the printed page has known will inevitably be challenged.

Given the wonderful indulgence of second-guessing, along with our current place in the history of cinema, let us wind the clock back a decade at a time and prognosticate on what could have been…

1999
Sherlock Holmes – Liam Neesan
Dr. Watson – Willem Dafoe
Directed by – Tim Burton
Burton seems the best choice as someone adept in both dark noir-like atmospheres, yet never relinquishing his quirky sense of humor. A Holmes pic would have made a great double feature with Sleepy Hollow, the film he released that year. It also could have dissuaded him, and spared us, from his next project: the Planet of the Apes debacle.

1989
Sherlock Holmes – Klaus Kinski
Dr. Watson – Klaus Kinski
Directed by – David Lynch
Come on, who wouldn’t want to see that?

1979
Sherlock Holmes – James Fox
Dr. Watson – David Bowie
Directed by –Louis Malle
Mainly to see a French sensibility from someone very comfortable working in English with English speaking talent. Although pairing Fox with another rock star so close to Nicholas Roeg’s Performance may be too cruel.

1969
Sherlock Holmes – Richard Burton
Dr. Watson – James Mason (Mason would actually play Watson ten years later in Murder by Decree. Still reuniting him with Reed is too rich to pass up).
Directed by –Carol Reed
Carol Reed did controlled suspense very well, see Fallen Idol or Odd Man Out; a Sherlock Holmes picture seems right in his wheelhouse. Even if he phoned it in we would be treated to something special.

1959
Sherlock Holmes – David Niven
Dr. Watson – Charles Laughton
Directed by –Nicholas Ray
Niven sticks to his trailer as Ray and Laughton argue endlessly over the color of pancake on Laughton’s face, before Ray storms off set to be replaced by Delbert Mann, who turns in a routine affair, with the best scenes already in the can from Ray.

1949
Sherlock Holmes – Fredric March
Dr. Watson – Ralph Richardson
Directed by – Jules Dassin
King of the late forties, early fifties noir, Dassin seems an interesting choice here, capable of creating the appropriate setting, yet making it all feel inevitably urban, gritty and modern.

1939
Sherlock Holmes – William Powell
Dr. Watson – Buster Keaton
Directed by –Michael Curtiz
With Powell and Keaton, the film would maintain a lighter edge, contrasting sharply, and hopefully effectively, with Curtiz’s disciplined direction. This is pre-Casablanca, when Curtiz was making harder-edged pictures such as Angels With Dirty Faces, as well as romantic adventures like Dodge City and The Adventures of Robin Hood. His Holmes would fall somewhere beautifully in between.

1929
Sherlock Holmes – John Barrymore
Dr. Watson – Henry B. Walthall
Directed by – Allan Dwan
Dwan was known as a working man’s director, perfect for the times, being equally capable with an adventure picture as he was a western or romance. In being so, he lacked the personal stamp so common amongst today’s filmmakers, letting his stars shine and technical craft do the talking for him.