Some film directors never get to make their long cherished 'dream' projects....(such as Hitchcock's lifelong attempts at the romantic ghost story "Mary Rose").......others do get that chance, only to experience a 'be-careful-what-you-wish-for' catastrophe.....
Billy Wilder and his longtime screenwriter collaborator, I.A.L. Diamond, unmatched masters of delicious wit, labored over ten years on their Sherlock Holmes script, a jewel of a screenplay that cleverly upended the typical Holmes-ian mysteries while celebrating them at the same time......
When finally ready to film, the Wilder/Diamond project, episodic in structure like a series of novellas, would require what was then called a 'roadshow' presentation in theaters........with a three hour running time, intermission and tickets sold on a reserved seat basis like legitimate theater....
But by 1970, the 'roadshow' movie, abused by studios who used the format to present a series of bloated, overproduced, abysmal musicals (chasing the 'Sound Of Music' golden goose), was headed for the tar pits, sinking fast. And truly..... neither studios or moviegoers missed them.......
'Roadshow' movies, by their very elephantine nature, almost always required big movie stars.,,,,,,but for one reason or another, Wilder couldn't line up the expected mega-stars for his Sherlock Holmes epic.....(taking a guess, here, but our feeling was he was exhausted from a lifetime of handling and wrangling Iconic actors....and besides, for this dream project movie, the star was the story.....and Billy Wilder's direction of it....)
Going against the grain, Wilder chose two superb, but completely unknown British actors for his Holmes and Watson, Robert Stephens and Colin Blakely.......and plucked Christopher Lee out of the horror trenches for his first big mainstream film role as Holmes' imperious brother Mycroft.
Wilder went ahead and filmed his and Diamond's massive script, which sent Holmes and Dr. Watson off on a variety of improbable adventures.......a comedic encounter with a Russian ballerina, a melancholy romantic mystery involving an deceptive beautiful woman, a gang ofmidgets and the Loch Ness Monster, a puzzler in a room turned upside down, and a role swap that made Watson the sleuth, investigating shipboard honeymooners found naked....and dead.
But the studio, United Artists was in no way ready to release a 3 hour Sherlock Holmes movie with no stars and unfamiliar storylines.......and the separate episode structure of the film made it relatively easy to whittle down into two hours......
Some of the episodes had to go........and so they did.
And tragically, so did the footage. Sliced out of the movie, the Upside Down Room and Naked Honeymooners sequences remain lost.....only the soundtracks of those episodes still survive. (Whoever was responsible for that at UA.....may they rot in hell....)
What's left in the film: the enormously witty Russian ballerina story which serves as a prologue to the Loch Ness/Midgets/Woman Of Mystery tale.
For us, it's still a lusciously rendered, unique feast.......sardonic wit, surprises and those winking, contemporary twists in character and plot that you'd expect from Wilder and Diamond. Stephens and Blakely make a perfect Holmes and Watson.......watching them react to the sly machinations of the Wilder/Diamond script becomes the film's greatest pleasure.
Add to that the pure whipped cream of an achingly beautiful Miklos Rosza music score, complete with a violin concerto for Holmes to play and you have something close to perfection.
While we'll always mourn for those missing adventures in "The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes", the remains of the film still entrance us. The BQ rating? Elementary, dear visitors.....5 stars (*****), a FIND OF FINDS. (And still hoping someone finds that footage....miracles can happen....)
No comments:
Post a Comment