Dear Sherlockians,

Let me share with you the details of a 1970
Hollywood-film on the great detective – “THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES”.
Though it was a box-office debacle, Allen Eyles describes the film as “one of
…the cinema’s masterpieces” and “the screen’s most intelligent, coherent and
convincing representation of the detective and his world” (Eyles, Allen.
“Sherlock Holmes: a Centenary Celebration”. London: John Murray, 1986. 112). The
British publicity-poster of the film is [or rather, was] rather intriguing –
against the detective’s silhouette, there is a submarine, a partially-covered
dazzling lady, a ballet-dancer and details (in black) of different London
locations. Presented by THE MIRISCH PRODUCTION COMPANY, it was produced and
directed by the celebrated director BILLY WILDER, who also wrote the script
along with I.A.L DIAMOND. The total cost for making the film was $10 million.
The character of Sherlock Holmes was played by ROBERT STEPHENS, Watson by COLIN
BLAKELY, and Mycroft by CHRISTOPHER LEE, while GENEVIEVE PAGE acted as Madame
Valladon, who, afterwards, turns out to be the German spy Ilse von
Hoffmannstahl. GEORGE BENSON is Inspector Lestrade, and IRENE HANDL acts as Mrs.
Hudson.

What the film is all about can be
guessed from the way the producer introduces it in the publicity-poster: “It
took a genius to cover up Sherlock Holmes’s vices, blunders and bizarre tastes.
Sherlock Holmes was a genius.” It is about the detective’s mistakes; but it is
also about his falling in love! At the beginning of the avant-garde film,
Watson’s grandson opens a tin dispatch box in the bank vault, and…lo…there is
the story of Sherlock Holmes’s short but passionate love-affair with Ilse von
Hoffmannstahl! The main narrative is set in a ship on the Mediterranean, and
there Watson discovers two bare corpses, but he mistakenly leads Holmes to a
cabin where two bare living human beings are having a good time! There is also a
flashback that shows Holmes as a student at Oxford, a champion-rower for the
University team, and his falling in love for the first time with a girl who
turns out to be a courtesan. There was originally a subplot – that
involving a dead Chinese in a room in which the furniture have had been hung
upside down, a trick devised by Watson to blow in interest in Holmes who was
contemplating suicide – but the episode was later removed! In this film, Wilder
tries to provide ingenuous explanations for two of world’s more famous mysteries
– that of the real identities of the Loch Ness Monster and Jack the Ripper, and
that is why, along with a few other factors, the film flopped!

The film shows Holmes as a lover of
women and Watson as a loud, excitable extrovert with normal healthy appetites.
The detective ignores Mycroft’s advice of dropping the case of the disappearance
of Monsieur Valladon, and falls head-over-heels in love with the supposed Madame
Valladon, with whom he masquerades as the couple Mr and Mrs Ashdown, during his
investigations during which he exposes the location of a secret submarine base
in Scotland to the antagonistic Germans. However, the beautiful German spy Ilse
falls for the detective ultimately. To her he describes the causes for his
bachelordom – his illicit infatuation for a married female client who organises
love-sessions with him to steal cyanide for sprinkling on her husband’s
steak-and-kidney pie, and his shock at the death of his fiancée because of
influenza twenty-four hours before their marriage! I would request every
Sherlockian to see the film if s/he finds the VCD or something.
The famous French architect ALEXANDRE TRAUNER prepared a superbly-constructed
hundred-and-fifty yards long replica of the Baker Street while the film was
being shot at the Pinewood Studios in 1969. The cinematography is by CHRISTOPHER
CHALLIS while the music score is by MIKLOS ROZSA.

Further information about the film from the esteemed Sherlockians is being
earnestly solicited.

Thanking you,

Yours sincerely,

(Pinaki Roy)



























From:

Pinaki Roy,
Department of English,
Faculty of Post-graduate Studies,
Malda College


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