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I must have been in need of a Miklos Rozsa 'fix' or something, because after viewing this film I enjoyed it so much, I'd like to add it to my library. Billy Wilder and I.A.L Diamond created this 1970 Film of a new adventure of Sherlock Holmes and his assistant/housemate, Dr. Watson, and added a 'twist' to it that I found intriguing and fun. The script is always entertaining, the acting is tops too with Robert Stephens and Colin Blakely as Holmes and Watson seemingly having a good time in their roles. Another added facet to this script shows Holmes as a liquid Cocaine addict (his 7% solution) he injects into his arm. The music of Miklos Rozsa just adds so much 'glamour of old' to the film, it really enhances the film, and Wilder chose his composer wisely here. You can even see Mr. Rozsa (I'm sure it was him, though uncredited), in profile but close enough to distinguish him as he plays the Orchestra Conducter of a stage production of 'Swan Lake' in the film.
I would dearly love for a Blu-ray version to come out someday. In the meantime, if you haven't seen this film, and you love Rozsa's film music, (who doesn't?) catch it on PRIME Streaming right now. Very entertaining!
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I would dearly love for a Blu-ray version to come out someday. In the meantime, if you haven't seen this film, and you love Rozsa's film music, (who doesn't?) catch it on PRIME Streaming right now. Very entertaining!
Um... Kino-Lorber has.
https://www.kinolorber.com/product/the-private-life-of-sherlock-holmes-blu-ray
Good to know there is one out there, didn't realize. But with all these huge releases coming out now, this Blu-ray will have to be put on the furthest of back-burners. The film is still too fresh in my mind, and I might go back to it on Prime again before it disappears in a month, which is usually the rule of thumb. After viewing it it DID make me go searching for the CD of it's Rozsa score, it's buried deep in the stacks I guess. So the search continues, or better yet...THE GAME'S AFOOT!
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I read an interview with Rozsa, & he was talking about Sherlock Holmes, & the missing scenes were already cut out when he scored the film, so there's no missing music. I haven't bought the Blu-ray, as from what I've seen of it, it doesn't look very good (made from old masters), hopefully a good looking remaster will be released before too long.
There was a report in a mid-sixties edition of the magazine Films & Filming that Wilder was about to start filming The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes staring Peter Sellers & Peter O'Toole, well that never happened (& looking how Holmes was played in the finished film, I'd think that O'Toole was set to play him).
Rózsa may have been misremembering when he did that interview as the Tadlow recording has music for the missing “Upside-Down Room” sequence (this music can be heard in the audio for this sequence on the deleted scenes feature on the Blu-ray) as well as one other deleted scene (“The Rambunctious Canary”). The audio for the original opening of the film also contains a bit of Rózsa’s original main title, which is also present on the Tadlow recording.
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This Wilder film has been among my all time favorites since I saw it way back in 1974 at the Biograph Theater in Chicago. I may be wrong with memory playing tricks on me, but I believe that Mr. Wilder was present for the screening as a part of a special Tribute that was convened at the Biograph for about a week. I know that the Biograph did this for Vincente Minnelli -- and I was in the audience when he presented and discussed "On a Clear Day". I believe the same happened with "Holmes" with Mr. Wilder -- he introduced the film and led a discussion afterwards. I believe he said that watching the film was simply painful -- and that no matter how audiences reacted, it was still a film that had been "destroyed" by the studio. But again, my memories of those days can fog up a bit as I was a film student and saw 10-20 films each week (sometimes up to 4 per day) either during class, on TV, at screenings, or at theaters in and around Chicago and at the Chicago Film Festival and other special events. So some things can get blurred.
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This Wilder film has been among my all time favorites since I saw it way back in 1974 at the Biograph Theater in Chicago. I may be wrong with memory playing tricks on me, but I believe that Mr. Wilder was present for the screening as a part of a special Tribute that was convened at the Biograph for about a week. I know that the Biograph did this for Vincente Minnelli -- and I was in the audience when he presented and discussed "On a Clear Day". I believe the same happened with "Holmes" with Mr. Wilder -- he introduced the film and led a discussion afterwards. I believe he said that watching the film was simply painful -- and that no matter how audiences reacted, it was still a film that had been "destroyed" by the studio. But again, my memories of those days can fog up a bit as I was a film student and saw 10-20 films each week (sometimes up to 4 per day) either during class, on TV, at screenings, or at theaters in and around Chicago and at the Chicago Film Festival and other special events. So some things can get blurred.
What a nice story John, thank you for sharing it! If I may, even a Billy Wilder film 'destroyed by the studio' is way above the levels of the talents and achievements of most filmmakers today, don't you agree?
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I love the film totally -- even though I know it was truncated and rearranged. It is still one of the great romantic films IMHO -- carried into a mythic realm by Rozsa's score. Makes romantic films of the current crop seem pale and wan by comparison.
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The music of Miklos Rozsa just adds so much 'glamour of old' to the film, it really enhances the film, and Wilder chose his composer wisely here. You can even see Mr. Rozsa (I'm sure it was him, though uncredited), in profile but close enough to distinguish him as he plays the Orchestra Conductor of a stage production of 'Swan Lake' in the film.
I would dearly love for a Blu-ray version to come out someday. In the meantime, if you haven't seen this film, and you love Rozsa's film music, (who doesn't?) catch it on PRIME Streaming right now. Very entertaining!
There is a Blu-ray. The film hasn't gotten the restoration it probably needs, but the biggest problem is that the film was shot with the kind of heavy diffusion that was, unfortunately, en vogue at the time. It keeps the image soft and colors muted, in the mistaken belief that that somehow imparts a "period" look. All it really does is impart an I-need-surgery -to-remove-these-cataracts look.
Secondly, Wilder didn't select Rozsa so much as Rozsa selected or, actually, inspired him. One day Wilder mentioned to Rozsa that he'd worn out his LP of the composer's Violin Concerto, Op. 24; when Rozsa asked why, Wilder replied that the first movement somehow reminded him of Holmes's addiction to cocaine, and that he'd been playing it over and over while he and co-writer I.A.L. Diamond labored on the Holmes screenplay. After that, Wilder knew he wanted Rozsa to adapt the Concerto into the film's score (since the Mirisch Company, which was producing the film, always pretty much wanted Elmer Bernstein to score everything, I imagine that Wilder received at least a moment's resistance from them, no matter Rozsa's thirty-two years' experience, three Oscars and three-picture history with Wilder).
Such a shame that this film was butchered before release, with a number of scenes cut. Some of these scenes are in the blu Ray extras.
Wilder and Diamond structured the film to be like a symphony, with episodes comparable to movements. Two of those movements, "The Curious Case of the Upside-Down Room" and "The Dreadful Business of the Naked Honeymooners" were cut; unfortunately, only audio has been found for the former, and only the picture elements for the latter, so no reconstruction of the film is possible.
Even more unfortunate is that nothing from the flashback to the young Holmes's days at Oxford, in which his antipathy toward women is established by a sequence in which he discovers that the girl with whom he's fallen in love is actually a prostitute has ever turned up. While the above "Upside-Down Room" and "Naked Honeymooners" are not terribly relevant to the film as it now exists, the missing Oxford sequence is actually quite important, and the film suffers from its absence.
There was a report in a mid-sixties edition of the magazine Films & Filming that Wilder was about to start filming The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes staring Peter Sellers & Peter O'Toole, well that never happened (& looking how Holmes was played in the finished film, I'd think that O'Toole was set to play him).
O'Toole was never set to play Holmes. Wilder wanted him, but was unable to obtain his services. There are two competing stories as to why: One is that O'Toole had a prior commitment to producer Sam Spiegel (who made "Lawrence of Arabia"), who didn't want to accommodate Wilder, the other, according to the not-entirely reliable memoirs of producer Walter Mirisch (whose family company produced "Holmes") is simply that O'Toole didn't want to do the film.
Either way, this is the single most unfortunate aspect to the film's production. O'Toole in the part would have made it a major film in every respect. It would, moreover, have made it a very easy film to market, as if ever there was an actor born to play the Great Detective, it was O'Toole ("Peter O'Toole IS Sherlock Holmes!").
When O'Toole's casting fell through, the studio and Mirisch brothers likely expected that Wilder would have drawn up a list of every bankable British actor who conceivably could have played the part; instead, Wilder settled on the talented and versatile, but largely unknown Robert Stephens. At this point, United Artists no longer could sell it as "________ IS Sherlock Holmes!" and instead had to sell the film's concept; the problem being that, fifty years on, even the film's greatest admirers cannot easily describe what kind of film it is: elegiac drama, comedy, rueful fictional biography, or a combination of all three, plus a half-dozen more?
So, the studio and two surviving Mirisch brothers (the third, Harold, having died in 1968) knew the film would be dead on arrival, yet the production money was committed, the sets being built, and play dates already booked. Everyone concerned would have to roll up their sleeves and labor as hard to produce a film with zero prospects as they would for one that had the potential to bring everyone involved riches and glory. Not a happy or pretty prospect.
Had O'Toole said "yes," and the flm had proceeded as a major production, the studio likely wouldn't have demanded cuts but, even if they had, Wilder and the Mirisches likely wouldn't have caved in to those demands. We'd have the full three-hour roadshow production Wilder intended. That still doesn't mean that the film would've been a success, but that makes absolutely no difference to us now. All we want is the full, finished movie.
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Posted: |
Jan 23, 2020 - 10:38 PM
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By: |
ANZALDIMAN
(Member)
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The music of Miklos Rozsa just adds so much 'glamour of old' to the film, it really enhances the film, and Wilder chose his composer wisely here. You can even see Mr. Rozsa (I'm sure it was him, though uncredited), in profile but close enough to distinguish him as he plays the Orchestra Conductor of a stage production of 'Swan Lake' in the film.
I would dearly love for a Blu-ray version to come out someday. In the meantime, if you haven't seen this film, and you love Rozsa's film music, (who doesn't?) catch it on PRIME Streaming right now. Very entertaining!
There is a Blu-ray. The film hasn't gotten the restoration it probably needs, but the biggest problem is that the film was shot with the kind of heavy diffusion that was, unfortunately, en vogue at the time. It keeps the image soft and colors muted, in the mistaken belief that that somehow imparts a "period" look. All it really does is impart an I-need-surgery -to-remove-these-cataracts look.
Secondly, Wilder didn't select Rozsa so much as Rozsa selected or, actually, inspired him. One day Wilder mentioned to Rozsa that he'd worn out his LP of the composer's Violin Concerto, Op. 24; when Rozsa asked why, Wilder replied that the first movement somehow reminded him of Holmes's addiction to cocaine, and that he'd been playing it over and over while he and co-writer I.A.L. Diamond labored on the Holmes screenplay. After that, Wilder knew he wanted Rozsa to adapt the Concerto into the film's score (since the Mirisch Company, which was producing the film, always pretty much wanted Elmer Bernstein to score everything, I imagine that Wilder received at least a moment's resistance from them, no matter Rozsa's thirty-two years' experience, three Oscars and three-picture history with Wilder).
Such a shame that this film was butchered before release, with a number of scenes cut. Some of these scenes are in the blu Ray extras.
Wilder and Diamond structured the film to be like a symphony, with episodes comparable to movements. Two of those movements, "The Curious Case of the Upside-Down Room" and "The Dreadful Business of the Naked Honeymooners" were cut; unfortunately, only audio has been found for the former, and only the picture elements for the latter, so no reconstruction of the film is possible.
Even more unfortunate is that nothing from the flashback to the young Holmes's days at Oxford, in which his antipathy toward women is established by a sequence in which he discovers that the girl with whom he's fallen in love is actually a prostitute has ever turned up. While the above "Upside-Down Room" and "Naked Honeymooners" are not terribly relevant to the film as it now exists, the missing Oxford sequence is actually quite important, and the film suffers from its absence.
There was a report in a mid-sixties edition of the magazine Films & Filming that Wilder was about to start filming The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes staring Peter Sellers & Peter O'Toole, well that never happened (& looking how Holmes was played in the finished film, I'd think that O'Toole was set to play him).
O'Toole was never set to play Holmes. Wilder wanted him, but was unable to obtain his services. There are two competing stories as to why: One is that O'Toole had a prior commitment to producer Sam Spiegel (who made "Lawrence of Arabia"), who didn't want to accommodate Wilder, the other, according to the not-entirely reliable memoirs of producer Walter Mirisch (whose family company produced "Holmes") is simply that O'Toole didn't want to do the film.
Either way, this is the single most unfortunate aspect to the film's production. O'Toole in the part would have made it a major film in every respect. It would, moreover, have made it a very easy film to market, as if ever there was an actor born to play the Great Detective, it was O'Toole ("Peter O'Toole IS Sherlock Holmes!").
When O'Toole's casting fell through, the studio and Mirisch brothers likely expected that Wilder would have drawn up a list of every bankable British actor who conceivably could have played the part; instead, Wilder settled on the talented and versatile, but largely unknown Robert Stephens. At this point, United Artists no longer could sell it as "________ IS Sherlock Holmes!" and instead had to sell the film's concept; the problem being that, fifty years on, even the film's greatest admirers cannot easily describe what kind of film it is: elegiac drama, comedy, rueful fictional biography, or a combination of all three, plus a half-dozen more?
So, the studio and two surviving Mirisch brothers (the third, Harold, having died in 1968) knew the film would be dead on arrival, yet the production money was committed, the sets being built, and play dates already booked. Everyone concerned would have to roll up their sleeves and labor as hard to produce a film with zero prospects as they would for one that had the potential to bring everyone involved riches and glory. Not a happy or pretty prospect.
Had O'Toole said "yes," and the flm had proceeded as a major production, the studio likely wouldn't have demanded cuts but, even if they had, Wilder and the Mirisches likely wouldn't have caved in to those demands. We'd have the full three-hour roadshow production Wilder intended. That still doesn't mean that the film would've been a success, but that makes absolutely no difference to us now. All we want is the full, finished movie.
Hi Avie.
Good post.
Let's Go Mets!
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I've no idea WHO Baker Street Irreverence is, but I have my suspicions. He or she, just joined this board to comment on this thread, so be it. It's a most welcome contribution, and a fascinating insight into the film's original conceptions of what 'might have been'. I've no problem at all with Robert Stephens portrail of Holmes, I find his performance refreshing and it seems he's having a fun time in the role. As much as I admire Peter O'Toole as an actor, and I do, the fact he didn't do this film is a kind of..'fate', if you will. And for those who believe in that sort of thing. I don't, but, there it is.
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