FOLIOI’m not an avid TV watcher, but I was pleased (though not surprised) when this year’s Emmy for Best Actor and Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or Movie went to Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, respectively, as Holmes and Watson in BBC’s Sherlock. A lifelong fan of the World’s Greatest Consulting Detective in both print and film, I was initially wary of the new PBS version, which updates and modernizes Arthur Conan Doyle’s inimitable characters. But all it took was watching the first episode in the first season, and I was hooked. (Season 3 completed its PBS run earlier this year; all episodes are now available on Netflix.)
Coincidentally, this past week also marked the first time I was able to see a 1970 film, just released to home video, that’s one of the more interesting Holmes movies: The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. By some counts, more films have been made about the Great Detective than any other fictional character, the earliest dating back to 1900. Scheduled for release in 2015 is Mr. Holmes, starring Ian McKellan as the aged detective (at 93!) coaxed out of retirement for one last case. Since the film is being directed by Bill Condon, who also coached McKellan when he played Frankenstein director James Whale in Condon’s 1999 Oscar-nominated Gods and Monsters, the outlook for Holmes’ continued longevity is terrific.
But back to 1970 and Private Life and what might have been. Directed by Billy Wilder and co-written with his longtime collaborator I.A.L. Diamond, the movie was to have been Wilder’s most ambitious and lengthiest (165 minutes) project. By that time, Wilder had already been nominated for 21 Academy Awards for writing and directing and had won five, sharing three nominations and one win (The Apartment) with Diamond. So both were at the top of their game in 1969, working with the biggest budget they’d ever had.
Then financial woes hit United Artists like a tsunami, and Wilder’s almost-three-and-a-half-hour rough cut (featuring several different episodes craftily linked) was pruned to the final 125 minutes with only two adventures, resulting in a fun film that’s still a bit disappointing, considering how epic it could’ve been.
In the first episode, Holmes (British stage actor Robert Stephens) and Dr. Watson (Colin Blakely) are called to the Russian ballet, where, it turns out, Holmes is being appraised as a mate for an aging ballerina. Certainly more comic than the usual Sherlock approach (Robert Downey’s version was still 40 years away), the opening story reflects the usual Wilder wit as well as touching on Holmes’ cocaine habit and his complicated attitudes toward women. (The topic of his coke abuse would move center stage in 1976’s entertaining The Seven Per Cent Solution, in which Holmes teams up with none other than Sigmund Freud (Alan Arkin), with Robert Duvall as Watson!)
The longer second adventure introduces Christopher Lee as Holmes’ older brother Mycroft, as Holmes spars with a femme fatale, who turns out to be a German spy trying to get the government’s plans for a “submersible” machine. The game is afoot as Holmes and Watson journey to the scenic Scottish highlands, encountering Queen Victoria as well as the fabled Loch Ness monster.
Resurrected at last on DVD, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes is a real treat, as witty and intelligent a take on a literary and cinematic legend as one might expect from Billy Wilder, a legend himself.
Follow FOLIO!