BOOKS-BRAZIL: Sherlock Holmes a Failure in Rio

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 17 1998 (IPS) - Brazilian humorist Jo Soares would have his readers believe that the fictional British detective Sherlock Holmes visited Rio de Janeiro in 1886. Holmes offered many demonstrations of his deductive powers and intelligence but failed to clear up a series of murders, fell in love and returned to London “with his chastity intact.”

In his first novel ‘The Shango of Baker Street’, Soares a local TV talk-show host, features real characters like French actress Sarah Bernhardt. Shango is an Afro-Brazilian deity and the book proved to be so popular here it is being made into a movie.

Filming began last month in the Portuguese city of Oporto, where director Miguel Faria Junior found streets similar to those 19th century Rio de Janeiro, and thus more suitable for location shooting. The cameras also are rolling in Rio and the nearby city of Petropolis, with filming due to end in January.

Portuguese actor Joaquim de Almeida plays Jo Soares’ Holmes and Portuguese actress Maria Medeiros, fluent in French, portrays Sarah Bernhardt.

The story goes that Brazilian Emperor Dom Pedro II invites Holmes to investigate the theft of a Stradivarius violin. The famed British detectivem, accompanied by his ever-faithful Dr. Watson, spent close to two months in Rio, according to Soares.

Their visit coincided with the presence of Bernhardt, who was performing there at the time. The case is complicated by a series of murders where female victims appear naked, without ears – and with a violin string entwined in their private parts.

But thrown off-track by cultural idiosyncracies Holmes, originally the hero of British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, fails to clear up the mystery, despite a trail of clues left by the serial killer.

He does manage to save one near-victim, however, a down-and-out dark-skinned stage actress, with whom he proceeds to fall in love. But one thing distinctly fails to lead to another, and Holmes returns to London with his “unshakeable chastity” intact, according to Soares.

Holmes willingly tries marijuana and adapts easily to local food and habits. But his errors and manners are treated with irony and sarcasm, in line with Brazil’s affinity for French culture in that era.

“The Shango of Baker Street” portrays late 19th century Rio and its cultural elite. Along with the Emperor appear poet Olavo Bilac, composer Chiquinha Gonzaga and other artistes and intellectuals of the period.

Mixing imagination with historic settings and events is the successful formula chosen by Soares, a comedian and humourist closely linked to the history of television in Brazil.

For more than 10 years, Soares has been entertaining Brazilians with his popular late-night talk show. In 1996, he surprised the public by showing still more of his multifaceted talent with the publication of his first novel. He already had demonstrated his skill as a writer with stage plays and his articles published in local newspapers and magazines.

His second novel, ‘ The Man who Killed Getulio Vargas (O Homem que matou Getulio Vargas)’ hit the bookshelves this week.

The book tells the life story of an anarchist named “Dimitri” who gets mixed up in a comic series of struggles and intrigues from 1897 to 1954. Extraordinarily clumsy and incompetent, Dimitri participates in key historical events all over the globe. His bungling almost triggers World War I and the death of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt. (Getulio Vargas, president in Brazil from 1930-45 and 1951-54, committed suicide in 1954).

Even more comic than Soares’ version of Holmes, a real-life Dimitri will probably grace the screens in the future.

Some have already described him as Brazil’s Forrest Gump, the dim-witted hero of a 1996 U.S. box office hit which outlined a historical period through the life of the central character, brilliantly brought to life in an Oscar-winning performance by U.S. actor Tom Hanks.