And it's been one of my favorites since I first saw it as a kid on the Big Screen in 1971. It’s all very devious and entertaining, with more heart than earlier cinematic Holmes … The setup is brilliant. 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. Review Date July 28th, 2014 by David Krauss. A. L. Diamond Billy Wilder Written byI. The film is still enjoyable enough, with good support from Christopher Lee as Holmes' brother Mycroft and a criminally brief appearance by Irene Handl as Mrs. Hudson and it is the performances throughout that maintain the interest. The fun of a good detective story isn't in the solution, anyway, but in the complications. 5.0 out of 5 stars A Rozsa rarity. Overview -. Wilder's second most underrated masterpiece. Rating 5 out of 5 stars with 1 review (1 Review) 100 % would recommend to a friend. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes has generally received positive reviews. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes 1970 film poster by Robert McGinnis Directed byBilly Wilder Produced byI. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes MGM Home Entertainment 1970 / color / 2:35 anamorphic 16:9 / 125 min. The same kind of obviousness takes the fun out of "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes," and that's a shame. May 17, 2012 Bob rated it it was amazing. Directed by Billy Wilder. THE FILM. 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. Yes, it's "revisionist," but Wilder obviously loved the characters, and it shows. 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. Rating Filter. Don't have an account? The photography of the lush Scottish landscape is beautiful and the scenes … 9 minute read. 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). This is much more to my taste. Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. 4 star rating. A. L. Diamond. 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. 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. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes Review. 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. Write a review. Please enter your email address and we will email you a new password. Read the Empire Movie review of Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes, The. Write a Review. Yet it doesn't feel like the work of a dyed-in-the-wool Sherlock buff. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. 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. 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. A wonderful, cruelly underrated film. With Robert Stephens, Christopher Lee, Colin Blakely, Geneviève Page. We miss the sense of satirical fun, as I've suggested. 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. 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. 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. Get the freshest reviews, news, and more delivered right to your inbox! By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy / 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 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. 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. 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. It takes Holmes about half an hour longer to solve the case than it takes us, and poor Watson never catches on. Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, The (1970) review. Billy Wilder's "Private Life of Sherlock Holmes" may be the most charming of the Holmes films. 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. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. (1) Customer rating. 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 entire effort may, I think, be ascribed to an insufficiency of imagination. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) cast and crew credits, including actors, actresses, directors, writers and more. 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. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. This unjustly forgotten Billy Wilder film takes on the much-loved character of Sherlock Holmes and attempts to humanize him by examining his vulnerabilities. User rating, 5 out of 5 stars with 1 reviews. Same thing happens in Howard Hawks' movie version, with Humphrey Bogart. Posted by Julien Bassignani Published 3 Years Ago. THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES is a Limited Collectors Edition offering the World Premiere of the complete score. 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." 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. 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). 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. Copyright © Fandango. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. 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. 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) … 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. and the Terms and Policies, This is one of the best re-recordings of a past film score available anywhere. Before the movie is 20 minutes old, Wilder has settled for simply telling a Sherlock Holmes adventure. and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and Fandango. 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. So what? 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