It begins promisingly enough with Sherlock being offered five pounds to trace six missing midget acrobats and complaining: "That's less than a pound a midget." The acting, photography and score are tops (Leonard Maltin) in … Unfortunately, this movie is now unavailable on DVD, and that's a crime. Much of the recounting will be familiar to the aficionado, but occasionally there is a nugget that perhaps was not known, or perhaps was forgotten. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. 5.0. Stage actor Robert Stephens brilliantly plays Holmes with a nod and a wink. Start your review of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. Film. Write a Review. There are also some sly innuendoes about his relationship with Dr. Watson, introduced solely to be disproved (Sherlock, you'll be glad to learn, is satisfactorily hetero in the Wilder version). When a bored Holmes eagerly takes the case of Gabrielle Valladon after an attempt on her life, the search for her missing husband leads to Loch Ness and the legendary monster. and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and Fandango. A. L. Diamond Billy Wilder StarringRobert Stephens Geneviève Page Colin Blakely Christopher Lee Music byMiklós Rózsa CinematographyChristopher Challis Edited byErnest Walter Production company Compton Films The Mirisch Corporation Phalanx Productions Distributed byUnited Artists Release date 29 October 1970 3 December 1970 Running time … Write a review. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes has generally received positive reviews. A very good show with excellent performances from Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, it nevertheless failed to capture the essence of what made the original stories so exciting. That film would be, perhaps, his most personal…THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, a three hour extravaganza designed as a final masterpiece from one of cinema’s most eloquent story tellers. 0 reviews 4 0. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes 1970 film poster by Robert McGinnis Directed byBilly Wilder Produced byI. 5 star rating. The central mystery -- concerning the Loch Ness Monster -- is less rewarding, and its shaggy sea-monster solution somewhat less than that. The fun of a good detective story isn't in the solution, anyway, but in the complications. The Holmes character, creeping around with his magnifying glass and (Watson tells us at the film's beginning) identifying a murderer by measuring the extent to which the parsley had sunk into the butter on a warm summer day, is a promising subject for the kind of satirical examination we expect from Wilder and his frequent co-author, I. We miss the sense of satirical fun, as I've suggested. But that alone needn't have been fatal. Copyright © Fandango. The picture has enough virtues and the flaws are sufficiently interesting for trivia enthusiasts that The Private Lives of Sherlock Holmes is worth dropping in on for a relaxing two hours. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) cast and crew credits, including actors, actresses, directors, writers and more. The plotting is weak, and ill-served by the movie's generally lackadaisical approach; but the dialogue is witty, and Wilder and Diamond get a lot of mileage out of the idea that Sherlock Holmes is as fragile as he is brilliant. Four decades later writers Steven Moffatt and Mark Gatiss, directly inspired by The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes, created the updated television series Sherlock. Rating Filter. The photography of the lush Scottish landscape is beautiful and the scenes … Yes, it's "revisionist," but Wilder obviously loved the characters, and it shows. 3 star rating. And it's been one of my favorites since I first saw it as a kid on the Big Screen in 1971. This is one of the best re-recordings of a past film score available anywhere. But they pass up the chance and bore us while Holmes laboriously unravels a case involving the midget acrobats, a missing husband, Trappist monks, the Loch Ness monster, dead canaries and a copper ring that has turned green. Sign up here. 9 minute read. Get the freshest reviews, news, and more delivered right to your inbox! The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. The setup is brilliant. Read the Empire Movie review of Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes, The. Please enter your email address and we will email you a new password. A wonderful, cruelly underrated film. It could be considered a pastiche, even a deconstruction of the character, while being a more than passable romp on its own terms. User rating, 5 out of 5 stars with 1 reviews. If you love Holmes, and who could not, then The Private Life of the master detective will be second only to Doyle's public life of Holmes and Watson. Overview -. THE FILM. Holmes is an extremely amusing and engaging picture, taking care of all the expected detective work as it offers a few surprises of its own. and the Terms and Policies, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. Director: Billy Wilder. Posted by Julien Bassignani Published 3 Years Ago. Reviews. This is much more to my taste. I read all the Sherlock Holmes stories when I was 10 or 11, feeling a sense of sheer delight when Holmes and Watson lounged away the evening in the upstairs rooms in Baker St., and a cab appeared out of the night, the rain and sleet, depositing at their door a visitor with a bloody handkerchief and a strange tale to tell. A. L. Diamond. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes the famous detective (Robert Stephens, Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet) and Dr. Watson (Colin Blakely, A Man For All Seasons ), are tasked with locating the missing husband of a mysterious woman (Geneviève Page, Belle de Jour) … It takes Holmes about half an hour longer to solve the case than it takes us, and poor Watson never catches on. With Robert Stephens, Christopher Lee, Colin Blakely, Geneviève Page. Billy Wilder's "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes" is disappointingly lacking in bite and sophistication, the first two qualities we'd expect from the director of " The Apartment " and "The Fortune Cookie." Before the movie is 20 minutes old, Wilder has settled for simply telling a Sherlock Holmes adventure. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes Review. Of all the 'old man directors', Wilder is the only one to embrace the spirit of the new Freedom of the Screen, creating sexually motivated characters without lapsing into exploitation. August 14, 2007 Billy Wilder's endearingly romantic The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes is...worth seeing just for Alexandre Trauner's sets, especially a magical Baker Street. Wilder's after something more profound than a simple mystery tale here and to a large extent he succeeds in his quest to cast the man in relief when held up against The Legend. It’s all very devious and entertaining, with more heart than earlier cinematic Holmes … Billy Wilder's "Private Life of Sherlock Holmes" may be the most charming of the Holmes films. Conceived as a three-hour roadshow but shorn of an hour by its disenchanted director prior to its release, Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) in its 125-minute form was met with mixed reviews and tepid box-office. Billy Wilder's psychological angle on Holmes is compelling. This review of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) was written by Dennis Schwartz and published by Ozus' World Movie Reviews on 23 June 2006. Don't have an account? The entire effort may, I think, be ascribed to an insufficiency of imagination. Wilder's second most underrated masterpiece. It begins promisingly enough with Sherlock being offered five pounds to trace six missing midget acrobats and complaining: "That's less than a pound a midget." THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES is a Limited Collectors Edition offering the World Premiere of the complete score. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes [Blu-ray] [1970] UPC. The book is some 200 pages but a quick, engaging read (depending, that is, on how much time you spend annotating), with a great bibliography of Sherlock-related texts at the end; and don't miss out on an opportunity to assess your own Sherlock cred by tackling the "Final Examination Paper" at the end ... sure to humble even the most avid and well-read Sherlock fans! The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. Directed by the great Billy Wilder, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes can be described in one simple sentence: Sherlock Holmes hunts the Loch Ness monster. The trail leads to Scotland, where the Loch Ness monster, Queen Victoria, a group of dwarves, Sherlock’s brother Mycroft and a submarine prototype are embroiled in a bizarre plot. But, Wilder gives The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes a schmaltzy ending, and I'm a … Billy Wilder's "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes" is disappointingly lacking in bite and sophistication, the first two qualities we'd expect from the director of "The Apartment" and "The Fortune Cookie." It is an absurd premise for sure, and one with a twist ending almost too bizarre for words, but I can't help but love this movie. Review Date July 28th, 2014 by David Krauss. Today, however, even in its severely compromised form it's regarded as one of Wilder's best films, some say the best of his late-career offerings. 5.0 out of 5 stars A Rozsa rarity. May 17, 2012 Bob rated it it was amazing. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes released 48 years ago has not been treated kindly on disc and unfortunately this blu ray is not much better. Miklos Rozsa's score for "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes" has been released before as a re-recording which was very good and well put together. Largely forgotten among the many glittering jewels of Billy Wilder’s work, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes is a revisionist depiction of Conan Doyle’s famous detective that we haven’t seen before or since. They are indeed, as he tells Watson, elementary. Verified Purchase. The movie might have worked better if the case itself had been more interesting: If, say, Wilder and Diamond had submerged Holmes in a story so filled with complications, clues, dead ends, mysterious strangers and double-whammies that we were just as confused as he was. A true evocation of the spirit of the Strand Magazine, this is the best Holmes movie ever made and sorely underrated in the Wilder canon. A. L. Diamond Billy Wilder Written byI. This existing version is still fascinating, funny and clever. I much prefer the Watson in the Jeremy Brett series, my favorite Sherlock Holmes films of all, where Watson is portrayed as an intelligent, able, and brave assistant to Holmes. It is in large part old-fashioned, in that it's mile-wide and ancient-history Sherlock Holmes, but it's also handsomely produced and directed with incisiveness by Wilder. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes MGM Home Entertainment 1970 / color / 2:35 anamorphic 16:9 / 125 min. Sidney Poitier’s 7 Most Memorable Performances, All Harry Potter Movies Ranked Worst to Best by Tomatometer. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. -- concerning the Loch Ness Monster -- is less rewarding, and my copy is personally inscribed by Otto.! 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