L’appartamento di Baker Street nel salotto degli italiani: lo Sherlock Holmes RAI tra feticizzazione del Canone e adattamenti televisivi europei

[Machine translation] The essay analyzes the television drama Sherlock Holmes (Guglielmo Morandi, 1968), produced by RAI and starring Nando Gazzolo, placing it in the larger process of transformation of the figure of Sherlock Holmes in European audiovisual culture between the Fifties and Sixties. The analysis is based on the progressive change in the relationship between adaptation and literary source: if in the first decades of the twentieth century it is common to transpose Holmes into the contemporary world, starting after World War II, there has been a growing attention for the Holmesan Canon and for the reconstruction of a recognizable and strongly codified Victorian universe., A decisive moment in this process was identified in 1951, with the Sherlock Holmes Exhibition organized as part of the Festival of Britain. The meticulous reconstruction of the Baker Street apartment and the exhibition of the objects associated with the detective's mythology help to transform Holmes into an icon to be preserved, catalogued and contemplated, anticipating that form of musealization of the character that will also find a subsequent expression in television practices. To the same trend belong the birth of the Sherlock Holmes Society and the literary operations aimed at recovering an alleged 'real' Holmes, as opposed to the numerous previous film reinterpretations., The essay then reconstructs the consolidation, during the Sixties, of a method of adaptation that was particularly widespread in European public television: British, German and, later, Italian and Soviet series recover the Canon through transpositions that were openly respectful of the settings, characters and spirit of Arthur Conan Doyle's texts. In this context, Sherlock Holmes Rai is presented as a case that is both coherent and original. Composed of only two episodes, The Valley of Fear and The Last by Baskervilles, each divided into three episodes, the script renounces the more properly television seriality to approach the model of reducing a literary classic. The expansion of the two novels and the particularly slow pace contribute to building the perception of a world far away in time and give the literary source an aura of authority., Particular attention is paid to the characterization of Holmes and his relationship with contemporary television models. Gazzolo's interpretation, more ironic and playful than that of Douglas Wilmer in the BBC series and that of Erich Schellow in the West German production, is combined with the choice of a dark atmosphere, explicitly inspired by the climate of Edgar Allan Poe. The script is thus placed in an intermediate position between fidelity to the canonical character and the need to make him recognizable on television, distinguishing him both from the action hero played by James Bond and from the more familiar commissioner Maigret., Finally, the interpretative core of the analysis concerns the representation of the Baker Street apartment, presented in the opening sequence as a real catalog of Holmesan mythology: the deerstalker, the pipe, the weapons, the scientific instruments, the disguises and the other elements traditionally associated with the detective are progressively shown by the camera. The sequence closely recalls the cinematographic documentation of the 1951 Sherlock Holmes Exhibition and transforms the domestic space into an exhibition space, almost a museum. Even before recounting an adventure, the television therefore invites the viewer to “visit” Sherlock Holmes and his universe, consecrating the objects of the Canon as relics of a cultural heritage that is now recognizable and shared. The Rai script thus emerges as a significant meeting point between literary adaptation, public television and the process of fetishizing the Holmesian icon.