The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970)

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
Directed by Billy Wilder
Written by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond based on characters created by Arthur Conan Doyle
1970/US
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Holmes: Criminals are as unpredictable as head colds. You never know when you’re going to catch one.

This movie doesn’t quite have that prime Wilder zing but it is entertaining.

The story is set in Victorian England and Scotland.  As the movie begins, we learn that it will concern cases solved by Sherlock Holmes (Robert Stephens) that have been sealed for 50 years and were never published by Dr. Watson (Colin Blakely).  We then segue into flashback for almost the whole film.  We learn of Holmes’s cocaine addiction.

The first story, which I wouldn’t call a mystery, concerns a Russian ballerina who wants Holmes to father her child.  The second involves the case of Gabrielle Valladon (Genevieve Page).  She is saved from drowning and taken to 221B Baker Street by a cabbie.  At first, she seems to be suffering from total amnesia.

But Holmes’s deductions begin to establish her identify and awaken her memories.  She is searching for her missing husband, a mining engineer.  The investigation takes Holmes, Gabrielle, and Watson to Scotland where Watson spots the Loch Ness monster.  With Christopher Lee as Mycroft Holmes.

This movie had been intended as a big-budget  road show production complete with intermission.  Financial problems at the studio scaled the project back to a standard release time and subjected the finished film to over an hour of cuts.  So it’s understandable that some of Wilder’s finesse might have ended up on the cutting room floor.  Then again a Victorian period piece doesn’t quite fit in with Wilder’s wise-guy urban style.  I must say the movie kept my interest throughout and presents a different more vulnerable Holmes than previous adaptations.