I have a lot of toasty warm affection for this underrated movie (which I saw second-run in Minneapolis the summer before I started music school), not least because of Hungarian-born Miklós Rózsa‘s score, which he based on his Violin Concerto, op 24.
Robert Stephens as the great detective and Genevieve Page as his latest client. Yes, that’s Sherlock Holmes embracing a beautiful, nude, warm and willing woman while heroically subduing his id.
This is Austrian-born Wilder and Romanian-born Diamond at their best, examining—through impish Hollywood eyes, of course—that weird combination of emotional reticence and superciliousness that makes English men just sooo attractive. Their great detective, however, turns out in the end (not to give anything away) to be a lonely man, unsophisticated, profoundly vulnerable, and something of a loser. Stephens’s highly original performance makes his my favorite Holmes of all.
Here’s the trailer from the latest theatrical re-release of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. The entire film is now on Prime.
- “The Story So Far, with Conductor John Wilson”
- “The Story So Far; Or, Conductor John Wilson—His Limits”
- Read my small writing on MEDIUM here
- Free pdf of my book JOHN WILSON: AN ENGLISH CONDUCTOR here
- Free pdf of my memoir re the Gyllenhaals A POET FROM HOLLYWOOD here
- Free pdf / epub of my romantic backstage comedy FEET ON THE GROUND here
- Free pdf of my screenplay BOLDEN: THE UNTOLD STORY OF JFK’S ASSASSINATION here
"I'll Be Dead Before You Break My Heart" 
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