Product description

The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes [1970]

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Binding : DVD
EAN : 5050070020823
Label : MGM Entertainment
Manufacturer : MGM Entertainment
Publisher : MGM Entertainment
Release date : 2004-06-07
Title : The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes [1970]
Actor : Array
Audience rating : Parental Guidance
Format : PAL
Languages : Array
Number of items : 1
Original release date : 1970-01-01
Region code : 2
Running time : 120
Studio : MGM Entertainment
Theatrical releaseDate : 1970-10-29
Number of discs : 1

Editorial reviews

Synopsis
In what may be the director's most personal film, he makes use of incidents from his own life in exploring the mystery of Sherlock Holmes sexual preference and past romances. Robert Stephens stars as the fictional detective, shooting cocaine to alleviate the boredom that plagues him between cases. But his ennui evaporates when he and longtime colleague Dr. Watson (Colin Blakely) receive tickets to the performance of a Russian ballet company. Afterwards, Petrova (Tamara Toumanova), the prima ballerina asks Holmes to become the father of his child, intending to combine her beauty with his intellect. Holmes refuses on the basis that he and Watson are lovers, greatly annoying his staunchly heterosexual companion, who begins to wonder whether the detective really is gay. Before this mystery can be solved, the two men find Gabrielle Valladon (Genevieve Page), a beautiful and intriguing woman in the grip of amnesia, on their doorstep. When she remembers that she's seeking her husband, Holmes agrees to take the case, and is soon off to Scotland. Matters grow progressively more bizarre, as the detective must deal with the Loch Ness monster, a family of midgets, and an experimental submarine. Unique among the director's films, it's steeped in a bittersweet romanticism, expressing a vulnerabilty and self-doubt found nowhere else in the body of his work. Robert Stephens, who was so overwhelmed by the intense sense of self-loathing Wilder wished him to explore that he attempted suicide during production, is excellent as Holmes, and the florid romanticism of Miklos Rosza's violin concerto creates a suitable ambiance.

Customer reviews

review by: date: 2008-03-03 rating:

A memorable Sherlock Holmes adventure
A marvellously crafted and witty take on the legendary detective Sherlock Holmes for all fans of his. It is a slanted, almost subversive reading of him, giving us a real man, with real vices and defects, and a real sense of humour, and gives us a far from stodgy Dr. Watson, much more a real friend of his than in other versions. This is all intended to give us something new, something quite tantalising, and something quite rewarding. It utterly succeeds in this, and throws in an adventure dripping in that dark Victorian quality all Holmes adventures have. It is clearly made by a huge fan of his, and Wilder revels at the chance of giving Sherlock's mysterious brother a prominent role. Stephens as Holmes is sensational. The screenplay is sparklingly good, and the story itself is as well detailed and entertaining as any of the Conan Doyle tales. It is a magnificent piece of work that should disappoint no one with the faintest of interests in Sherlock Holmes. The DVD itself is fine, no extras but at this price, who can complain! A great addition to anyone's collection.

review by: date: 2008-01-08 rating:

A forgotten gem!
Excellent take on Holmes. The interplay between Holmes & Watson is delightful. It may flag slightly towards the end, but this has class written all over it.

review by: date: 2007-12-01 rating:

A truly great movie - but go for the Region 1 DVD!
A long-time dream project for Billy Wilder, beginning life as a musical, going through several years of rewrites and casting proposals - at one point even a vehicle for Peter O'Toole and Peter Sellers until the director found both impossible to make a deal with - before going into production as a hugely expensive $10m budgeted three-hour plus roadshow picture only to be cut down to little over two hours when exhibitors refused to book the uncut version, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes is something of a legend in itself. The whereabouts of all the elements for a full restoration has long defied the finest minds in film restoration, adding a layer of mystique and what-if? to the film's reputation.

The best way to watch The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes is to forget what could have been and marvel at what is left. For all its problems, even in the heavily cut version that was eventually released, this is one of Billy Wilder's greatest and certainly most heartfelt achievements - and a pretty good yarn as well, throwing missing dwarves, dead canaries, Trappist monks, Swan Lake, Sherlock's mysterious brother Mycroft, Queen Victoria and the Loch Ness Monster into the mix, as well as an amnesiac woman who rouses more than Holmes' professional curiosity, to tragic results.

Throughout, Wilder presents a much less self-assured vision of the great detective than had been seen before. In the opening scene he castigates Watson for the expectations the Doctor's stories in Strand Magazine have instilled in the public, and the film proceeds to ultimately explore that painful gap between expectations and reality with no mercy to the character's feelings but much compassion.

Where to Watson's spirit of adventure, all things are possible, to Holmes all things can be disassembled and found wanting. There's real pain, loneliness and despair behind his façade of dry wit. Robert Stephens' Holmes is a genuinely tragic figure, a victim of his own intellect whose descent into becoming a thinking machine is more an act of self-defence at his poor judgement in matters romantic. The final shots of him reaching for a shot of cocaine to hide a broken heart are one of the most haunting images of its era.

Colin Blakely's Watson too is a great creation. He is never mere comic relief or the all-too-familiar buffoonish stereotype but a fully realised figure pained by his inability to deal with his friend's drug use (and discomfort with being his unwitting supplier). There's a humanity, familiarity and genuine emotional interdependence to their partnership that most other screen pairings have missed, aided immensely by some remarkable writing. If there's such a thing as a script so sharp you could cut yourself on it, then parts of this could cause fatal injury. To quote every good line would mean typing out half of the script, and certainly the entire Bolshoi Ballet where Clive Revill's impresario makes an unusual business proposal to Holmes. But it's not all highbrow. Example: "Who's that at this hour?" "Maybe Mrs Hudson is entertaining?" "Really? I've never found her so."

But more than amusing dialogue, this is a film which has been clearly thought through in every detail - at one point, Holmes' is even glimpsed through a haze of smoke as boredom clogs his mind. Even though Wilder's visual imagination is limited, the film is sumptuous to look at, particularly in its proper widescreen ratio, but for many, the major impetus for buying this DVD will be the location of the soundtrack (but not the picture) for the original opening half-hour of the picture (including The Case of the Upside Down Room) and the picture (but not the sound) for The Dreadful Business of the Naked Honeymooners. Unfortunately you won't find them on the PAL DVD - thanks to MGM/UA's old policy of dropping extras from special editions of back-catalog titles outside the USA that was in place when this disc came out, you won't even find the trailer! Picture quality is somewhat disappointing, especially compared to the laserdisc - a bit soft and definitely in need of a remastering.

If you have a multi-system player, go for the Region 1 disc instead - the transfer is equally disappointing, but the extras package goes a long way to compensating!

As for the extras that can only be found on the Region 1 NTSC disc...

The weight of expectation that comes with what has thus far been located of the missing footage is, in truth, more than two of the episodes can bear. The real gem is The Curious Case of the Upside Down Room, less for the case itself but for what it tells us about the relationship between Holmes and Watson, precipitating a crisis that is only resolved by deceit on Holmes' part (Holmes' admission to Watson is very affecting). It's also the only deleted section that seems to serve a real purpose in the film's design. Neither the original opening scene in the train, more of a skit than anything of significance, or The Dreadful Business of the Naked Honeymooners advance the plot or illuminate the characters, being little more than overextended, very mildly amusing sketches.

The supplementary section is also mildly disappointing, not because of the effort put in by the producers of the original laserdisc who collated many of them: again, it's a case of decades of expectation working against it. The laserdisc included an early draft script that was intriguing - apparently almost everything was filmed - but it also contained some crudely misplaced elements. Mycroft's line about the last doctor who warned him about his gout falling on an orange peel and breaking his neck originally replaced the fruit with a very unconvincing use of the word 'turd,' while the original addenda to the ending, with Lestrade asking Watson if Holmes will help solve the Jack the Ripper case, seems particularly lame. However, for the NTSC DVD release only script and stills montages for the deleted scenes are included.

The stills archive is good, although it is a shame that it limits itself to purely colour shots. However, there is far too little of the pressbook for those who want to know more about the film. For some reason a panned-and-scanned version of the quite brilliant but spoiler-heavy trailer has been used, and a well-worn one at that (note to newcomers to the film: avoid it until you've seen it, as it gives away two major plot twists). A lengthy on-camera interview with editor Ernest Walter is also included, although be warned that he gets one detail wrong (it is indeed Jenny Hanley who played Holmes' university `sweetheart' in a lost flashback sequence), while, exclusive to the DVD, there's also a 15-minute interview with Christopher Lee. The isolated music track of Miklos Rozsa's superb score that was on the laserdisc is NOT included on the DVD (the track was problematic: with the masters long lost, a dubbing mix track was used with the volume varying wildly).

Picture quality is somewhat disappointing, especially compared to the laserdisc - a bit soft and definitely in need of a remastering.

review by: FrKurt Messick date: 2005-11-29 rating:

Grand even as an edited version
This film is sometimes described as a comedy, and while it has humourous bits (a more sardonic and biting form of humour most of the time), it has never really felt at home being classified as a comedy, in my estimation. I do like the rapid-fire wit that Holmes seems to have here (a bit more in abundance than in the canonical Conan Doyle stories), but the Holmes presented here is a bit more dark and brooding, more akin to the extra-canonical 'Seven Percent Solution' Holmes in many ways.

Wilder was an extraordinary director and genius who sometimes gets carried away with his subject (in this regard, he is sometimes compared with Stanley Kubrick). His films are often of epic-proportions, even though they are not essentially 'epic' subjects. This film is reputed to have been nearly twice as long as the final cut version, but this tale may be apocryphal in that the raw footage every made it to final print and production. The restoration available on this disc is, in fact, rather minimal - a few scenes and a few extras, but not much more than the original release of the film. This is disappointing to many fans, but in fact is more than most of us have had for a long time, as the somewhat choppy film was often mercilessly cut for television broadcast.

Holmes in this case is played by Robert Stephens, an unlikely Holmes in comparison to standards such as Rathbone, Brett, or Gillette, but still an interesting choice - quintessentially British, reserved but daring, brilliant yet flawed and faltering. Colin Blakely presents a stronger Watson than often portrayed before (this film, being made in 1970, presented this as a newer idea for Watson, one that has been picked up by many subsequent productions). Wilder has the actors play at various issues of Victorian sensibility and morality, including the implication (dismissed in the end) that Holmes might have a sexual identity issue. Christopher Lee, who himself plays Holmes in other productions, plays Holmes' smarter brother Mycroft here, to good effect.

The story line does have some inspiration from the canonical stories (the Bruce-Partington Plans, for one), and from Gillette's play (the strange case of Miss Faulkner, introducing an ending that allowed for a love interest for Holmes in the end), but for the most part takes the characters from Conan Doyle and runs far afield. Still, this is must-see film for any fan of Holmes, and any fan of Wilder, who saw this as one of his last great productions.

review by: date: 2004-08-31 rating:
Oh so close
This offers a wonderfully intruiging narrative that is charmingly redolent of Conan Doyle's most relentlessly coiling stories. Additionally it chucks in some excellently human and humorous touches.

There are great performances from Richard Stephens as Holmes, and Christopher Lee as Mycroft.

It's a lovely film, which is spoiled by only two things: 1) the constantly, infuriatingly annoying Watson who is neither funny or endearing but is just an absolute persistent pain and who is completely intolerable by about twenty minutes in, leaving the viewer with a recurring desire to see him stabbed in the eye by a cocaine-crazed Holmes. 2) The picture quality, which is pixellated and frequently blurry, exceedingly reminiscent of something like a Granada TV dvd transfer. Ie. it's shockingly poor.

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