Review of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) by Jeff Z — 30 May 2010

It's sad when the great ones begin to lose it. It happened to Willie Mays. It's happening to Ken Griffey Jr. And it happened to Billy Wilder with this dreary Sherlock Holmes film a good example of a director/writer past his prime.

Originally concieved as a 3 hour plus extravangansa, this is pretty hard to watch at 2 hours and 5 minutes. Some of the deleted scenes on the DVD flesh out the Holmes-Watson relationship nicely and deal with Holmes cocaine addiction, but can't see how they could have saved the picture.

Nothing very interesting happens until after the first 70 minutes of this flop. The main mystery of the first half of the movie is whether Holmes is gay. Robert Stephens choose to play Holmes as obviously fey and Colin Blakely makes one wonder if Jack Lemmon couldn't have tried to do a British accent to help out his buddy Wilder. The only one who comes off well here is Christopher Lee as Holmes brother Mycroft.

Unless you're interested in watching the decline of a great director or just want to see all the major Sherlock Holmes movies, you'd be well advised to skip this one.