THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES B-
Great Britain (125 mi) 1970 ‘Scope d: Billy Wilder
Not sure where Wilder was going with a 3-hour version of this film, which is certainly slow enough as is, originally conceiving a mythic epic of 4 different stories along with a prologue and epilogue divided by an intermission, becoming a bone of contention between the director and United Artists who forced him to reduce the film to 2 episodes, something that haunted him the rest of his life as the missing footage was lost. Fraught with production troubles, the film was shot on location in Scotland featuring a scene with the Loch Ness monster, where the original sequence was too difficult to light properly and in the trial run the mechanical monster unfortunately sank to the bottom of the sea, forcing Wilder to reshoot the entire sequence in a studio. Nonetheless, this exposes both a different side of Wilder and Sherlock Holmes, showing a human face to this conventional storybook character, who as he ages grows more sadly circumspect, questioning himself and his abilities, his fading reputation, especially when he is unable to adequately solve a case, unhappy about his lifelong insecurities and loneliness, along with his detachment from women, acknowledging his use of cocaine while intimating he is secretly gay. Showing a darker more complex side of his personality, Holmes (Robert Stephens) retains his intellectual acumen while Dr. Watson (Colin Blakely) is no slouch in that department either, where both are an excellent compliment to one another, displaying, as the title suggests, a more intimate side of the infamous and world renowned investigating team.
The opening sequence shows Wilder’s love and fascination with the Russians, our arch enemy during the Cold War, always given that duplicitous face, as if they’d sell out their own mother for a price, using comic exaggeration to overemphasize dialog and dubious character, where Holmes is drawn into a case involving a conniving Russian ballerina, where backstage at a performance he becomes the chosen one selected to sire her future child, as she has the beauty but is looking for the perfect combination of intellect, offering him a Stradivarius violin for his troubles. Thinking quickly on his feet, he’s required to graciously deny the request as he shares Tchaikovsky’s amorous inclinations which would prove disastrous under these circumstances, insinuating a lifelong partnership with Watson. When word gets out it spreads across the floor, where Watson is in the midst of drunken revelry dancing to Russian balalaika music with a line of beautiful ballerina dancers, where amusingly one by one the females are replaced by male dancers, all staring adoringly at him. Afterwards, still in a drunken rage, Watson is furious with Holmes for ruining his reputation with his Army buddies, supposedly staining his reputation across the entire nation, where presumably he’s a ladies man. Watson’s insults lead to a question of Holmes’ flawed character, as he typically distrusts women in general, which leads to the next case which is literally dropped in their lap.
A driver arrives at their doorstep carrying a lovely woman (Geneviève Page, the brothel Madame in Buñuel’s 1967 BELLE DE JOUR) who can’t remember who she is, but is carrying a card in her hand of Holmes’ address. They quickly determine her identity, Gabrielle Valladon from Brussels, but not the location of her missing husband, supposedly a Belgian engineer, leading them on a search to Inverness, Scotland to find him. Despite her coy answers and elusive beauty, Holmes finds her quite the challenge, becoming fond of her and dumfounded actually until a visit from his own brother Mycroft (Christopher Lee) tips him off that she’s working undercover as a secret agent and is a threat to national security. Their leads uncover a sect of silent Trappist monks, a band of midgets, a communicating parasol, dead canaries, and a strange confrontation with the Loch Ness Monster during a fog drenched afternoon boat ride on a lake. The parallel lives of the two adversaries interestingly carry a similar underside they both share, each committed to a lifelong commitment to undercover or secret operations, both missing their romantic other half, both relying on their intellectual skills to get them out of trouble, and both emotionally challenged by living lives of such deep-seeded isolation. Holmes is still Holmes, always the smartest guy in the room, but exhibits a somewhat imperfect character here, developing conflicting feelings on a case, thrown off his game by his developing affection and disappointment in love. While the characters themselves are excellent, especially Watson, musical score by Miklós Rózsa, again co-written by I.A. L. Diamond, Wilder allows the pace to continually languish, where he never finds a natural rhythm, instead giving it a kind of awkward Victorian Gothic feel.
