Holmes, so clever he could tell your occupation by looking at your boot or the thumb of your left hand, isn't very clever at all in most of his famous cases. Before the movie is 20 minutes old, Wilder has settled for simply telling a Sherlock Holmes adventure. It is a fitting tribute to this Hungarian-born film music master on the centennial year of his birth. User rating, 5 out of 5 stars with 1 reviews. We miss the sense of satirical fun, as I've suggested. Start your review of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. 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 setup is brilliant. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. Four decades later writers Steven Moffatt and Mark Gatiss, directly inspired by The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes, created the updated television series Sherlock. May 17, 2012 Bob rated it it was amazing. Copyright © Fandango. 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. B illy Wilder's endearingly romantic The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes is back in a new print and it's worth seeing just for Alexandre Trauner's sets, especially a magical Baker Street. 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. Verified Purchase. 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. 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. 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. So what? This is one of the best re-recordings of a past film score available anywhere. 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. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. Please enter your email address and we will email you a new password. 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). All rights reserved. The central mystery -- concerning the Loch Ness Monster -- is less rewarding, and its shaggy sea-monster solution somewhat less than that. 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." Read the Empire Movie review of Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes, The. Posted by Julien Bassignani Published 3 Years Ago. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes has generally received positive reviews. Watch carefully, and you'll discover that the loose ends are never tied up, and the case ends without being solved (and with no one, apparently, noticing). Overview -. They are indeed, as he tells Watson, elementary. 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." And it's been one of my favorites since I first saw it as a kid on the Big Screen in 1971. Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, The (1970) review. 738329132828. THE FILM. Yet it doesn't feel like the work of a dyed-in-the-wool Sherlock buff. (1) Customer rating. One of the cornerstone books in any serious Sherlockian bookshelf, and my copy is personally inscribed by Otto Penzler. Billy Wilder's psychological angle on Holmes is compelling. Forgot your password? Don't have an account? Rating Filter. The photography of the lush Scottish landscape is beautiful and the scenes … The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes 1970 film poster by Robert McGinnis Directed byBilly Wilder Produced byI. 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. With Robert Stephens, Christopher Lee, Colin Blakely, Geneviève Page. But, Wilder gives The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes a schmaltzy ending, and I'm a … Time Out says. 3 star rating. Reviewed in the United States on June 26, 2014. 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. Directed by Billy Wilder. 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. 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. Reviews. Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. 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. and the Terms and Policies, This unjustly forgotten Billy Wilder film takes on the much-loved character of Sherlock Holmes and attempts to humanize him by examining his vulnerabilities. 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. I bought this blu ray as gift for a close friend for his birthday and we where both shocked to witness the lack care of care for the movie itself. 1 review 5 1. Write a review. Film. and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and Fandango. The fun of a good detective story isn't in the solution, anyway, but in the complications. But before the movie is 20 minutes old, Wilder has settled for simply telling a Sherlock Holmes adventure. But that alone needn't have been fatal. Rating 5 out of 5 stars with 1 review (1 Review) 100 % would recommend to a friend. The same kind of obviousness takes the fun out of "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes," and that's a shame. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes Review. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) cast and crew credits, including actors, actresses, directors, writers and more. 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 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." This is much more to my taste. Same thing happens in Howard Hawks' movie version, with Humphrey Bogart. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. A wonderful, cruelly underrated film. Review Date July 28th, 2014 by David Krauss. A. L. Diamond. 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. / Street Date July 15, 2003 / 19.98 Starring Robert Stephens, Colin Blakely, Geneviève Page, Christopher Lee, Tamara Toumanova, Clive Revill, Irene Handl Cinematography Christopher Challis Production Designer Alexander Trauner Art Direction Tony Inglis 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! 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. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes [Blu-ray] [1970] UPC. 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 … It could be considered a pastiche, even a deconstruction of the character, while being a more than passable romp on its own terms. Sign up here. Yes, it's "revisionist," but Wilder obviously loved the characters, and it shows. My favorite Raymond Chandler novel is "The Big Sleep," which is so complicated that Chandler never does pull the case together. 5.0 out of 5 stars A Rozsa rarity. 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. 5.0. The entire effort may, I think, be ascribed to an insufficiency of imagination. 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. Billy Wilder's "Private Life of Sherlock Holmes" may be the most charming of the Holmes films. 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. 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. 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. THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES is a Limited Collectors Edition offering the World Premiere of the complete score. 5 star rating. A. L. Diamond Billy Wilder Written byI. The acting, photography and score are tops (Leonard Maltin) in … 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. It takes Holmes about half an hour longer to solve the case than it takes us, and poor Watson never catches on. Viewers that haven't seen The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes are in for a big surprise, for it is a loving valentine to old-fashioned moviemaking. 4 star rating. A mismatch of flavours (Holmes, Wilder) the thought of which doesn't so much turn your stomach as lead to speculation, and the taste of which is soured only by a foreknowledge of missed opportunities. 0 reviews 4 0. 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. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. 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. 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. Get the freshest reviews, news, and more delivered right to your inbox! The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes MGM Home Entertainment 1970 / color / 2:35 anamorphic 16:9 / 125 min. Unfortunately, this movie is now unavailable on DVD, and that's a crime. But a year or so ago, rereading a dozen or so Holmes cases, I made a melancholy discovery: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle really wasn't very good at constructing devious plots. It’s all very devious and entertaining, with more heart than earlier cinematic Holmes … 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. 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." In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. Sidney Poitier’s 7 Most Memorable Performances, All Harry Potter Movies Ranked Worst to Best by Tomatometer. The TV Homages of WandaVision are an Amusing, Unfulfilling Distraction, On the Disempowerment of Promising Young Woman, Entertaining 30 Coins Examines Depths of Evil with Style. 9 minute read. Have another look at the case of the red-headed league, for example, or the mystery of the orange pips, and you'll find yourself leaping ahead of Sherlock's supposedly brilliant deductions. Write a Review. Director: Billy Wilder. 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) … 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. 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