They Might Be Giants remains a play­ful take on the Sher­lock Holmes mythos

“Let it be said, they found us very close togeth­er, in the light.” After the suc­cess of 1968’s The Lion in Win­ter, the next project by direc­tor Antho­ny Har­vey and writer James Gold­man was expect­ed to reach sim­i­lar heights. Instead, They Might Be Giants, a roman­tic com­e­dy about a wid­owed judge who thinks he’s Sher­lock Holmes (spare a thought for the mar­ket­ing team), was released in 1971 to luke­warm reviews.

Goldman’s orig­i­nal play, direct­ed by Joan Lit­tle­wood and star­ring Step­toe and Son’s Har­ry H Cor­bett, hadn’t quite worked on stage in its brief Lon­don run. Har­vey was report­ed­ly unhap­py with the fin­ished cut of the film, too; with its van­ish­ing char­ac­ters and laps­es in nar­ra­tive log­ic, it’s clear that the many cuts made were almost fatal.

And yet They Might Be Giants has gained a cult fol­low­ing in the 50 years since its release. Its emo­tion­al pow­er and zany charm linger in the mind much longer than its obvi­ous fail­ings. Devo­tees of Arthur Conan Doyle’s world-famous sleuth will cer­tain­ly appre­ci­ate George C Scott’s lead per­for­mance. Deduc­tions are made, leads are pur­sued, and a vio­lin is hor­ri­bly mur­dered. The real twist, though? They Might Be Giants isn’t real­ly about Sher­lock Holmes at all. The clue is in the tit­u­lar ref­er­ence to a cer­tain Man of La Man­cha, whose off­beat world­view is approv­ing­ly cit­ed by our ​“Holmes”.

Much of the film’s run­ning time is spent fol­low­ing Justin Play­fair, a trag­ic char­ac­ter lost to psy­chosis after his wife’s death, tilt­ing at wind­mills in a grimy New York City as Joanne Woodward’s Dr Mil­dred Wat­son scut­tles after him. She’s a Dr Wat­son rather than the Dr Wat­son, but that’s more than enough for this coun­ter­feit Holmes.

Justin’s broth­er Blevins (Lester Rawl­ins) wants him com­mit­ted so he can use his estate to pay off some very sin­is­ter debtors. Wat­son, an emi­nent psy­chi­a­trist work­ing in a hos­pi­tal she loathes, jumps at the chance to observe a rare case when she’s brought in to sign off on the diag­no­sis. Once she realis­es that Justin is in gen­uine dan­ger, the game is well and tru­ly afoot.

In Mildred’s dingy flat hangs a paint­ing of Don Quixote rid­ing his white horse, Roci­nante. An old man on a beast as weary as he is, or a noble war­rior atop his trusty steed? The answer, of course, is both.

Justin’s obses­sion with an all-pow­er­ful, mon­strous­ly cru­el ​“Mori­ar­ty” con­ceals a mind keen­ly aware that Blevins is plot­ting against him. His Holmes iden­ti­ty is a shield for a supreme­ly ratio­nal man blind­sided by grief: anthro­po­mor­phis­ing it makes it solv­able, explic­a­ble. There’s a qui­et­ly heart­break­ing moment when he com­ments, still in the third per­son, on Justin’s late wife’s ​“pret­ty name”. For his Holmes per­sona she’s just anoth­er stranger: a name in a case file, some­body else’s loss.

Ear­ly in the film, he bru­tal­ly deduces that no one that Mil­dred loved ever loved her back, and the truth of it is all over the doctor’s face. Her stunned silence when Justin final­ly, ten­ta­tive­ly asks her to din­ner says every­thing: the dis­be­lief that some­thing which only hap­pens to oth­er peo­ple is final­ly with­in her grasp. Wood­ward and Scott are both aston­ish­ing­ly good, a pair of per­fect­ly matched mis­fits, treat­ing the bru­tal homo­gene­ity of polite soci­ety with the cheery con­tempt it deserves.

John Barry’s theme, rich in sup­pressed feel­ing, hints at the film’s ulti­mate truth. It lies in kind­ly librar­i­an Wilbur Peabody’s (Jack Gil­ford) cher­ished fan­tasies of being the Scar­let Pim­per­nel. You can see it in the Bag­gs, a sweet old cou­ple (real-life hus­band and wife Wor­thing­ton Min­er and Frances Fuller), the own­ers of a stu­dent-free school for arborists who have spent years alone togeth­er with only their care­ful­ly pruned top­i­ary for com­pa­ny. And it’s behind switch­board oper­a­tor Peggy’s (There­sa Mer­ritt) yearn­ing to help a fran­tic young woman, the bureaucrat’s mask slip­ping as she turns to Holmes in tears. ​“You care!”, he breathes, mid-reproof.

They Might Be Giants reminds us that we all want a lit­tle romance and adven­ture in our lives, to feel as though some­one under­stands our needs. In the end, there’s a begin­ning: the duo face Mori­ar­ty side by side in Cen­tral Park in the film’s ambigu­ous final scene. Is the bright light they see from the head­lights of the hitman’s car, or has Mil­dred joined Justin in his delu­sion forever?

Some­one will die tonight, but will it be them or Holmes and his Boswell, fac­ing their neme­sis one last time so that Justin Play­fair and Mil­dred can live again? Time for our heroes to make a stand – like the law­men in Justin’s favourite west­erns – and step into that search­ing light. The final mys­tery is solved. Holmes and Wat­son, Don Quixote and San­cho Pan­za, Justin and Mil­dred: insep­a­ra­ble in life or death. We stand on the thresh­old with them, the choice ours to make.