The personal life of Sherlock Holmes

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Movie
German title The personal life of Sherlock Holmes
Original title The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
Country of production Great Britain
original language English
Publishing year 1970
length 125 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director Billy Wilder
script IAL Diamond
Billy Wilder
production IAL Diamond
Billy Wilder
Mirisch Corporation for United Artists
music Miklós Rózsa
camera Christopher Challis
cut Ernest Walter
occupation
synchronization

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes is a British film satire by director Billy Wilder from 1970 based on motifs by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle .

action

Fifty years after the death of Dr. According to his last will, Watson is pulled out a chest with his estate from the vault of a London bank and opened. It contains memorabilia of his friend Sherlock Holmes, as well as a manuscript written by Watson that provides details from the life of Sherlock Holmes beyond his major, well-known criminal cases, which Watson has previously published.

Holmes, who lives with Watson in an apartment at 221B Baker Street in London , suffers from insufficient demands due to a lack of interesting new orders. He occasionally stimulates himself with cocaine , which, of course , does not please Watson as a doctor.

One day they get an invitation to a Swan Lake performance by a famous Russian ballet company . They visit her in the hope of a new task, but Holmes learns there that the famous prima ballerina Madame Petrova only intends to father a child with him for a fee in order to mix his ingenious spirit with her grace and beauty. So cornered and so as not to hurt Madame, the disinterested Holmes claims that he has a homosexual relationship with Watson . Watson reacts horrified and indignant when he learns of this false statement. Nevertheless, he wonders what kind of relationships Holmes actually has with women. He should find out soon.

One evening a carriage brings a young lady past Holmes, whom the coachman has pulled out of the waters of the Thames . The lady is apparently suffering from amnesia, presumably because she has just survived an assassination attempt. Holmes discovers the lady's name is Gabrielle Valladon and is looking for her husband, Emile. Holmes, Watson and Gabrielle set out to find this one. Suddenly Holmes' brother Mycroft , who works for the British government, appears. Mycroft asks his brother Sherlock, without further explanation, to keep his hands off the matter. But now he feels even more motivated.

The trail leads the three into the Scottish highlands to Inverness . They observe that three coffins are buried at the same time in a cemetery without relatives being present. Having become suspicious, they discover the wanted Emile in a coffin. Holmes notices that the copper wedding ring is strangely discolored and there are three bleached white canaries lying on it. Such discolorations occur, so Holmes' speculation, under the influence of chlorine gas .

In nearby Loch Ness , Watson discovers the legendary monster . During a boat trip, Holmes realizes that it must be a machine-powered vehicle. Now Mycroft reappears too. He rebukes his brother for not listening to him, but is now determined to explain the background to him and leads him to a concealed hall in the ruins of Urquhart Castle , where he shows him the prototype of the first British submarine . which is being tested in top secret in Loch Ness. An accident occurred in the course of which chlorine gas developed inside the boat, which killed three crew members.

Furthermore, Mycroft explains, Gabrielle is actually the German secret agent Ilse von Hoffmanstal. Holmes is astonished to find that she and the German secret service used him to lead her to the submarine with the cleverly threaded thing. But Mycroft also experiences a disappointment: Queen Victoria secretly appears in person at the same hour to examine the new invention. But when she learns that it should be used for warlike purposes, she outragedly rejects it as unsporting and unbritish.

Ilse von Hoffmanstal is arrested as a German spy, but is soon exchanged for a British spy captured in Germany. As a farewell, she sends Holmes a goodbye with her umbrella using Morse code , which Holmes welcomes.

But later Mycroft sends his brother the news that Ilse was caught and executed while spying in Japan. Watson, who has followed Holmes' relationship with Ilse with astonishment, realizes that Holmes had fallen in love with the intelligent lady. Apparently the detective can only establish relationships with women who are spiritually close to him.

Others

Considered one of his most personal films, the film is very different from Wilder's original conception of a much longer episode film. Only two of the planned episodes remained in the final version, although some of the other cases solved by Holmes in the script were also shot. Originally, the film was to be shown as a road show attraction . H. as part of a larger event moving from city to city, whereby the individual cases should probably also be presented separately from one another. In its finished form, the film did not become a huge financial success, but received praise from critics.

At the request of director Billy Wilder, Miklós Rózsa adapted his Violin Concerto, Op. 24 , which he had composed for Jascha Heifetz in 1956 , for the film music. The famous film composer can also be seen as a conductor in one scene of the film.

A mock-up of the monster sank while filming at Loch Ness in 1969. In April 2016, the Norwegian company Kongsberg Maritime reported using sonar recordings to find a 9 × 4 m object at the bottom of Loch Ness that was shaped to resemble one Swan remember and what it is probably about this prop. According to contemporary reports, director Billy Wilder had requested the removal of two humps on the dummy, which were used as floating bodies to stabilize the model. Kongsberg does not want to recover the object, but rather photograph it with a diving robot.

synchronization

The German dubbing was only made in 1976 on behalf of ZDF . Here actor Robert Stephens was dubbed by Christian Rode ; More than 25 years later, the Maritim radio play label produced a Sherlock Holmes radio play series in which Rode also played the role of Holmes.

role actor Voice actor
Sherlock Holmes Robert Stephens Christian Rode
Dr. John H. Watson Colin Blakely Harald Juhnke
Ilse von Hoffmanstal alias Gabrielle Valladon Geneviève Page Almut Eggert
Mycroft Holmes Christopher Lee Helmo Kindermann
Nicolas Rogozhin Clive Revill Gerd Martienzen
mortician undertaker Stanley Holloway Arnold Marquis
Mrs. Hudson Irene Handl Tina Eilers
Queen Victoria Mollie Maureen Tilly Lauenstein
Hotel manager Robert Cawdron Hans Nitschke
Tourist guide James Copeland Hans W. Hamacher
coachman Michael Balfour Manfred Grote
Woman in wheelchair Catherine Lacey Ursula War
Porter Alex McCrindle Eric Vaessen
First carter John Garrie Hans W. Hamacher
Second carter Godfrey James Manfred Lehmann

Reviews

source rating
Rotten tomatoes
critic
audience
IMDb

The film received mostly positive reviews and achieved a rating of 92% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 26 reviews and 73% from the audience with around 4,000 votes. At IMDb , the film received 7.1 out of a possible 10 stars with around 9,700 votes. (As of October 21, 2019)

  • "Ironic-leisurely crime comedy (...). An amusing, slightly melancholy game of appearance and reality, myth and legend as well as the ambiguous morality of society; lovingly furnished and excellently played." - Lexicon of international film

DVD and Blu-ray publishing

DVD

  • The personal life of Sherlock Holmes . MGM Home Entertainment, 2004
  • The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes - 90 Years of United Artists, No. 115. United Artists , 2009
  • The Personal Life of Sherlock Holmes - 2 Disc Special Edition. Koch Media , 2017

Blu-ray

  • The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes - Special Edition. Koch Media, 2017

Soundtrack

  • Miklós Rózsa : The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. World Premiere Recording of the Complete Score . Tadlow Music, et al. 2007, sound carrier no. TADLOW004. Digital re-recording of the complete film music and additional bonus tracks by The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Nic Raine (24-Bit-High-Resolution Recording (HDCD))

literature

  • Hardwick, Michael + Mollie: The private life of Sherlock Holmes, 1970 (Sherlock Holmes private life, 1973 and Holmes and the spy, 2006, ISBN 3-89840-213-4 ),
  • Michael Ross (Ed.), Oliver Bayan: Sherlock Holmes in Film and Television. A manual . Baskerville books, Cologne 2003, 237 pages, ISBN 3-930932-03-2

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lost dummy monster discovered in Loch Ness. In: orf.at. April 15, 2016, accessed April 16, 2016 .
  2. ↑ The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970). In: synchrondatenbank.de. Retrieved November 2, 2008 .
  3. ↑ a b c The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes at Rotten Tomatoes (English) Template: Rotten Tomatoes / Maintenance / "imported from" is missing, accessed October 21, 2019
  4. ↑ a b The private life of Sherlock Holmes in the Internet Movie Database , accessed on October 21, 2019
  5. ^ Lexicon of International Films . CD-ROM edition. Systhema, Munich 1997
  6. ^ Adolf Heinzlmeier, Berndt Schulz: Lexicon "Films on TV" . Extended new edition. Rasch and Röhring, Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-89136-392-3 , p. 655