Review – The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes

The capsule description on the DirecTV guide made it sound like this production was going to directly confront the ambiguously gay nature of the relationship between Holmes and Watson. The picture does tiptoe around the issue, but apparently way back in 1970 it was still too early for a genuinely frank consideration. Homosexuality aside, the movie turns out to be something of a mess. Director Billy Wilder’s original cut was nearly double the running time of the version released by the suddenly-epic-shy studio. What remains is a cluttered tale of spies, little people, monks and so on. We even get a taste of the Loch Ness Monster. Thus the tale lacks the simple elegance of Doyle’s stories and many of the more successful pictures based thereon. Mildly amusing