The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
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| The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes | |
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 1970 movie poster by Robert McGinnis |
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| Directed by | Billy Wilder |
| Produced by | I. A. L. Diamond Billy Wilder |
| Written by | Screenplay: I. A. L. Diamond Billy Wilder Characters: Arthur Conan Doyle |
| Starring | Robert Stephens Genevieve Page Colin Blakely Christopher Lee |
| Music by | Miklós Rózsa |
| Cinematography | Christopher Challis |
| Distributed by | United Artists |
| Release date(s) |  October 29, 1970 December 3, 1970 |
| Running time | 125 Min |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $10,000,000 (est.) |
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes is a 1970 film directed and produced by Billy Wilder; he also shared writing credit with his longtime collaborator I. A. L. Diamond. It starred Robert Stephens as Sherlock Holmes and Colin Blakely as Dr. Watson. The film offers an affectionate, slightly parodic look at the man behind the public facade, and draws a distinction between the "real" Holmes and the character portrayed by Watson in his stories for The Strand magazine.
The film was originally intended as a roadshow attraction, touring major cities only on its initial run. However, it was heavily edited on its original release, and significant sections of the film are now missing.
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[edit] Synopsis
The film is divided into two separate, unequal stories. In the shorter of the two, Holmes is approached by a famous Russian ballerina, Madame Petrova (Tamara Toumanova), who proposes that they conceive a child together, one who she hopes will inherit her physique and his intellect. Holmes manages to extricate himself by claiming that Watson is his lover. This upsets Watson when he realizes that Holmes is not known to have had any relations with women, whereas Watson has, having been married in the canonical stories.
In the main plot, Belgian Gabrielle Valadon (Genevieve Page) is fished out of the River Thames and brought to Baker Street. She begs Holmes to find her missing engineer husband. The resulting investigation leads to a castle in Scotland. Along the way, they encounter a group of monks and some midgets, and Watson apparently sights the Loch Ness monster.
It turns out that Sherlock's brother Mycroft (Christopher Lee) is involved in building a pre-World War I submarine for the British Navy, with the assistance of Mr Valadon. When taken out for testing, it was disguised as a sea monster. The midgets were recruited as crewmen because they took up less space and needed less air. When they meet, Mycroft informs Sherlock that his client is actually a top German spy, Ilse von Hoffmanstal, sent to steal the submersible. The "monks" are German sailors.
Queen Victoria (Mollie Maureen) arrives for an inspection of the new weapon, but is "not amused" by its unsportsmanlike nature. She orders the exasperated Mycroft to destroy it, so he conveniently leaves it unguarded for the monks to take (rigging it to sink when it is submerged). Frau von Hoffmanstal is arrested, to be exchanged for her British counterpart.
In the final scene some months later, Sherlock receives a message from his brother, telling him that von Hoffmanstal had been arrested as a spy in Japan and shot. Saddened, the detective retreats to his room to seek solace in drugs and his violin.
Holmes' attitude to von Hoffmanstal is clearly reminiscent of that towards Irene Adler in the canonical Holmes story "A Scandal in Bohemia" - i.e. a grudging respect for a worthy opponent - though Wilder more clearly hints at the two being platonically in love with each other than was the case with Adler.
[edit] Missing scenes
The film originally contained another two separate stories, and a further flashback sequence showing Holmes in his university days. These were all filmed, but later cut from the final release print. One sequence, in which Holmes investigates the seemingly impossible case of a corpse found in an upside down room, has been recovered and restored to the film's laser disc release. The Region 1 DVD release restored portions of these segments and several others. They are made up of soundtrack and a series of stills. Another scene features Colin Blakely as a descendant of Watson receiving the tin dispatch box from solicitors.
[edit] Cast
- Robert Stephens as Sherlock Holmes
- Colin Blakely as Dr. John H. Watson
- Genevieve Page as Gabrielle Valladon
- Christopher Lee as Mycroft Holmes
- Irene Handl as Mrs. Hudson
- Clive Revill as Rogozhin
- Tamara Toumanova as Madame Petrova
- Stanley Holloway as 1st Gravedigger
- Mollie Maureen as Queen Victoria
- Catherine Lacey as Old Woman
[edit] Critical reception
While not a major box office success, the film was well-received by most critics. It has a rating of 95% on Rotten Tomatoes.[1] A review in Empire magazine described it as the "best Sherlock Holmes movie ever made" and said it was "sorely underrated in the Wilder canon".[2]
[edit] Cultural references and inaccuracies
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- There are inconsistencies about when the film is supposed to be set. In the main story Holmes signs into a guest register giving the date as 1888. However the film contains references to Holmes stories in The Strand, where they first appeared in 1891, and to the development of Zeppelins, again implying a later date. Madame Petrova claims to have read The Hound of the Baskervilles, which was only published a few months after the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 (and she must have read it in translation which would have been even later).
- Stanley Holloway appears in a cameo as a gravedigger, in a reference to his role in Laurence Olivier's 1948 version of Hamlet.
- Wiggins, the messenger at the Diogenes Club to whom Mycroft gives instructions regarding various items, shares the name of the leader of the Baker Street Irregulars who often assist Sherlock in his investigations.
- The British secret service are seen abandoning the new submarine because of an order from Queen Victoria. In fact she was a constitutional monarch who did not exercise power over such matters, although it is likely that, had she expressed an opinion in public, ministers - and especially Royal Navy Officers bound by an oath of obedience - would have felt bound to defer to her wishes. The First Lord of the Admiralty (minister in charge of the Royal Navy) would have made the decision, probably in consultation with the Prime Minister over so major a piece of defence policy.
- The legal, political and moral problems resulting from submarines shooting torpedoes without warning to destroy surface ships - in contravention of the rules hitherto governing naval warfare - did become a major issue in the First World War (see Submarine warfare#World War I) but that was long after the death of Queen Victoria.
- A historical Austrian Von Hofmannsthal family existed (and still exists) which included the well-known novelist and poet Hugo Von Hofmannsthal. The film does not claim that the fictional woman spy, who is German not Austrian, is related to them.
- Most Victorians would never have heard of the Loch Ness Monster; this legend became widely known only in the 1930s.
- Mycroft says that the submarine has been undergoing sea trials in the Moray Firth. This is implausible since this would mean passing through either the River Ness or the Caledonian Canal, which in either case raises a number of practical problems.
- The film depicts incidents surrounding a performance in London of the ballet Swan Lake as performed by the Imperial Ballet of the Mariinsky Theatre of St. Petersburg, however the ballet company of this theater never toured in the history of its existence, nor was the ballet Swan Lake ever produced outside of Russia until the twentieth century.
[edit] References
- ^ The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes Movie Reviews, Pictures - Rotten Tomatoes
- ^ Empire Reviews Central - Review of The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes
[edit] External links
- The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes at the Internet Movie Database
- The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes at the TCM Movie Database
- The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes at Allmovie
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