The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970)

Directed by Billy Wilder. Starring Robert Stephens, Colin Blakely, Geneviève Page, Christopher Lee, Clive Revill, Tamara Toumanova, Irene Handl, Mollie Maureen, Stanley Holloway. [PG-13]

Something of a passion project for director/co-writer/co-producer Wilder, this original Sherlock Holmes adventure was originally envisioned as a stage musical in order to go unattacked by the motion picture Production Code, but by the end of the 1960s, those restrictions had eroded, and Wilder proceeded with a cinematic production instead. After an enjoyable first act that lives up to the title and provides a wry glimpse into the personal, “behind-the-pages” lives of Holmes and Dr. Watson—the implication of two “bachelors” living together, the bizarre but fruitful experiments that aid the art of criminology, the cocaine binges, etc.—but then it settles into a mediocre mystery for Holmes to solve involving the queen, a secret submersible, Trappist monks, German spies, and the Loch Ness monster. Stephens and Blakely are up to the task, and Wilder’s script (co-authored by I. A. L. Diamond, who also shared producing duties) supplies a pleasing blend of light humor and heavy melancholy, but there’s little snap or bite to the dialogue that the Hollywood legend was known for, and like a good number of his lesser efforts, a shrewder editor was needed to trim the fat and keep it moving—and that’s after roughly one-third of its length was shorn from the original three-and-a-quarter hour cut! In regards to the role of Sherlock’s brother, Mycroft, either Lee is miscast or the character was written without reverence to canon. Miklós Rózsa’s score combined original material with measures adapted from one of his earlier violin concertos.

65/100