In this movie Holmes confronts Professor Moriarty.
In Conan Doyle's story The Final Problem Holmes describes Moriarty to Watson:
I was sitting in my room thinking the matter over, when the door opened and Professor Moriarty stood before me.
"My nerves are fairly proof, Watson, but I must confess to a start when I saw the very man who had been so much in my thoughts standing there on my threshhold. His appearance was quite familiar to me. He is extremely tall and thin, his forehead domes out in a white curve, and his two eyes are deeply sunken in this head. He is clean-shaven, pale, and ascetic-looking, retaining something of the professor in his features. His shoulders are rounded from much study, and his face protrudes forward, and is forever slowly oscillating from side to side in a curiously reptilian fashion. He peered at me with great curiosity in his puckered eyes.
Artist Sidney Paget, who illustrated the Holmes stories in The Strand magazine, visualized Moriarty thus:
I'll tell you who I thought looked like Moriarty, at least how I visualize him: Patrick O'Brian, the late author of the Aubrey/Maturin novels:
O'Brian has eyes that closely resemble those of a Komodo Dragon:
I saw a televised special on O'Brian once, and he actually does have Moriarty's habit of swaying his head back and forth, and his eyes, especially when asked a question that displeases him, are cold in the extreme, and glare in a reptilian fashion.
Just my opinion.
5 comments:
Those are Michael Caine's eyes!
@wally: can't say I agree, Walt. Caine's eyes are blue; too light, I think, for Moriarty's. Conan Doyle didn't describe Moriarty's eyes as pale, but as sunken and reptilian, and reptiles mostly have dark eyes.
I meant the lizard's eyes looked like Michael Caine's.
@wally: I invariably think of the young, handsome Michael Caine of Zulu, not the senior citizen.
He's done some mighty fine acting in recent years, though, even if he's not quite as handsome.
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