The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
| The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes | |
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1970 film poster by Robert McGinnis
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| Directed by | Billy Wilder |
| Produced by |
I. A. L. Diamond Billy Wilder |
| Written by | I. A. L. Diamond Billy Wilder |
| Starring |
Robert Stephens Geneviève Page Colin Blakely Christopher Lee |
| Music by | Miklós Rózsa |
| Cinematography | Christopher Challis |
| Edited by | Ernest Walter |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by | United Artists |
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Release date
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Running time
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125 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $10,000,000 (est.) |
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes is a 1970 DeLuxe Color film in Panavision written and produced by Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond, and directed by Wilder. The film offers an affectionate, slightly parodic look at Sherlock Holmes, and draws a distinction between the "real" Holmes and the character portrayed by Watson in his stories for The Strand magazine. It stars Robert Stephens as Holmes and Colin Blakely as Doctor Watson.
Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, the creators and writers of the Emmy Award-winning and critically acclaimed series Sherlock, credited The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes as their very favourite movie, as well as a source of inspiration for their show.
The film is divided into two separate, unequal stories. In the shorter of the two, Holmes is approached by a famous Russian ballerina, Madame Petrova (Tamara Toumanova), who proposes that they conceive a child together, one who she hopes will inherit her physique and his intellect. Holmes manages to extricate himself by claiming that Watson is his lover, much to the doctor's embarrassment.
In the main plot, a Belgian woman, Gabrielle Valladon (Geneviève Page), is fished out of the River Thames and brought to Baker Street. She begs Holmes to find her missing engineer husband. The resulting investigation leads to a castle in Scotland. Along the way, they encounter a group of monks and some dwarfs, and Watson apparently sights the Loch Ness monster.
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