The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes

Holmes is bored at Baker Street: there is no case, the cocaine case sits on the table, and Watson regards that as a problem. Then a woman pulled from the Thames is left at the door; she has lost her memory and says she is looking for her husband. The investigation leads to Scotland, to a monastery, and to rumours of a creature in a loch. What emerges at the end is not a murder but a state secret, and the fact that Holmes has been used. The film is not interested in detection but in Holmes himself: why he lives alone, what his relationship with Watson is, and why he has turned his feelings into a method. Wilder does this by protecting him rather than mocking him, and the last scene is not a solution but a loss. Billy Wilder directed and wrote with I. A. L. Diamond. Robert Stephens plays Holmes and Colin Blakely plays Watson. It was shot as a three-hour picture in four parts, with a rough cut running three hours and twenty minutes. The studio did not trust the form and cut it to two hours and five minutes. What went included the opening sequence, a flashback to Holmes's university years and two complete episodes. A full print is not believed to survive. Who it is for: anyone who likes Wilder and Holmes adaptations that step outside the usual. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a brisk mystery. The cuts leave the story unbalanced, the middle is slow, and the loch material looks distinctly old today.