The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes is a 1970 DeLuxe Color film in Panavision written and produced by Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond, and directed by Wilder. The film offers an affectionate, slightly parodic look at Sherlock Holmes, and draws a distinction between the "real" Holmes and the character portrayed by Watson in his stories for The Strand magazine. It stars Robert Stephens as Holmes and Colin Blakely as Doctor Watson.
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes | |
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1970 film poster by Robert McGinnis | |
Directed by | Billy Wilder |
Produced by | I. A. L. Diamond Billy Wilder |
Written by | I. A. L. Diamond Billy Wilder |
Starring | Robert Stephens Geneviève Page Colin Blakely Christopher Lee |
Music by | Miklós Rózsa |
Cinematography | Christopher Challis |
Edited by | Ernest Walter |
Production company | Compton Films The Mirisch Corporation Phalanx Productions |
Distributed by | United Artists |
Release date |
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Running time | 125 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $10,000,000 (est.) |
Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, the creators and writers of the Emmy Award-winning and critically acclaimed series Sherlock, credited The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes as a source of inspiration for their show.
Screenplay
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, much to the doctor's embarrassment. Back at 221B, Watson confronts Holmes about the reality of the ensuing rumours, and Holmes only states that Watson is "being presumptuous" by assuming Holmes has had relationships with women.
In the main plot, a Belgian woman, Gabrielle Valladon (Geneviève 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 dwarfs, 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 Monsieur Valladon. When taken out for testing, it was disguised as a sea monster. The dwarfs 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 objects to 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). Fräulein 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 subsequently executed by firing squad. Heartbroken, the detective retreats to his room to seek solace in drugs and his violin.
- Robert Stephens as Sherlock Holmes
- Colin Blakely as Dr. John H. Watson
- Geneviève Page as Gabrielle Valladon/Ilse von Hoffmanstal
- 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
- James Copeland as the guide
- Jenny Hanley as a prostitute
- Alex McCrindle as Baggageman
Cut 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 at the studio's insistence. One sequence, in which Holmes investigates the seemingly impossible case of a corpse found in an upside-down room (with furniture on the ceiling), has been recovered and restored to the film's laser disc release. (Holmes quickly deduces that Watson staged the whole thing in an attempt to pique Holmes' interest and drag his friend out of a deep depression.) There is also a 12-minute sequence called "The Dreadful Business of the Naked Honeymooners", in which Watson insists on trying to solve murders aboard a ship by himself, only to later discover he has gone to the wrong cabin. Another scene features Colin Blakely as a descendant of Watson receiving the tin dispatch box from solicitors.
Lost Loch Ness prop
A 30ft (9m) model of the Loch Ness Monster was built for the film in 1969. The model included a neck and two humps and was taken alongside a pier for filming of portions of the film. Billy Wilder did not want the humps and asked that they be removed, despite warnings that it would affect its buoyancy. As a result, the model sank. The model was rediscovered in April 2016 during a Scottish expedition to find the Loch Ness Monster.
Subtext
Director Billy Wilder has said he originally intended to portray Holmes explicitly as a repressed homosexual, stating, "I should have been more daring. I have this theory. I wanted to have Holmes homosexual and not admitting it to anyone, including maybe even himself. The burden of keeping it secret was the reason he took dope." Holmes' personal interests and particularly his feelings for Watson remain ambiguous in the film, including but not limited to Holmes' admission that he is "not a whole-hearted admirer of womankind," the enjoyment he derives from implying to outsiders that he and Watson are lovers, and his statement that Watson is "being presumptuous" by assuming there have been women in his life, among others. Mark Gatiss called The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes "the film that changed his life" for this reason: "It's a fantastically melancholy film. The relationship between Sherlock and Watson is treated beautifully; Sherlock effectively falls in love with him in the film, but it's so desperately unspoken."
Upon its U.S. release, Vincent Canby called it a "comparatively mild Billy Wilder and rather daring Sherlock Holmes, not a perfect mix, perhaps, but a fond and entertaining one". Kim Newman, reviewing it in Empire magazine, described it as the "best Sherlock Holmes movie ever made" and "sorely underrated in the Wilder canon". Roger Ebert was more critical, giving the film two and a half stars out of four. He wrote that it is "disappointingly lacking in bite and sophistication", that it "begins promisingly enough" but that "before the movie is 20 minutes old, Wilder has settled for simply telling a Sherlock Holmes adventure".
Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian, reviewing the film in 2002, wrote: "Billy Wilder's distinctive, irreverent slant on the world's greatest 'consulting detective' holds up reasonably well 32 years on; you wouldn't expect anything directed by Wilder and scripted by his long-time associate I. A. L. Diamond to be anything less than funny and watchable, and this is both".
In 1994, Image Entertainment released the film on laserdisc, in what was called Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, The: Special Edition; the release includes "The Dreadful Business of the Naked Honeymooners"; the sequence was subtitled because no audio was available.
The Region 1 DVD release restored portions of cut scenes, consisting of soundtracks and a series of stills. A Blu-ray version was released 22 July 2014 by Kino Lorber. It includes deleted scenes and bonus material.
A 2018 novel - The Continuity Girl, by Patrick Kincaid - is set during the making of the film.