Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970)

 The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes was conceived as a roadshow epic but by the time it was released the roadshow was effectively dead and MGM did not want to release the original version of three hours, cutting it to 125 minutes, eliminating two of the four stories.  One would love to see a restored complete version but, alas, apparently the footage has not survived.  I do admit that reading about this cut footage makes one feel that it might not have made the film better; the cut footage seems to be mostly comedy while the film that now exists is a melancholy film of loss by an aging and old-fashioned director, comparable to John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) and Chaplin's Limelight (1952).

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes as it now exists consists of two chapters.  In the first Holmes is wanted by a Russian ballerina (played by Tamara Toumanova) to father her child and in the second he tries to help a woman to find her missing husband.  The first part is comedy with underlying seriousness while the second is melodrama with underlying comedy; both deal with Holmes's attitude to women, who he claims not to trust.  In the first part he spurns the ballerina's offer by hinting that he and Watson are lovers, in the second part he is outwitted by a German spy, Gabrielle Valladon (Genevieve Page) by whom he seems to be smitten, especially admiring her for her intelligence.

The film is a beautiful period piece, the second part being filmed on location in Scotland, as Holmes (Robert Stevens), Watson (Colin Blakely) and Valladon look for Gabrielle's husband.  Holmes's ratiocination leads them to discover what's going on but he is completely bamboozled by Gabrielle;  his brother Mycroft (Christopher Lee), of the foreign office, has to explain to him who Garbrielle is.  Even Queen Victoria (Mollie Maureen) makes an appearance.  Gabrielle is arrested and returned to Germany in an exchange of spies. When Holmes finds out later that she was caught and executed in Japan he insists that Watson tell him where the cocaine is hidden.

Billy Wilder wrote the script with I.A.L. Diamond, the widescreen cinematographer was Christopher Challis, the superb art direction by Alexander Trauner and the lovely score was by Miklos Rozsa, who did the score for Wilder's Double Indemnity in 1944.