Mark Gatiss on The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes

first of all why did you pick this film you told me to know this is uh by a long way my favorite Sherlock Holmes film and really although it's difficult to say what's your definitive favorite film it's probably my favorite film I think it sort of does everything I want to film to do if if this was all on a Bank Holiday Monday I would be very pleased it has that kind of wintery afternoon feel I saw it when I was very young and it profoundly affected me I think it's both a brilliant respectful homage to Conan Doyle and yet an incredibly irreverent take on it it's Billy Wilder he was one of the most sophisticated and brilliant filmmakers we've ever had and it's Sherlock Holmes it's sort of it's a funny thing I introduced this film about three or four years ago it's a book festival and I spent the whole time talking about how wonderfully melancholy it was and then it started and I thought I forgotten it's incredibly funny yeah which it is and and principally I think because it's along with the buzz of Rathbone films it's the great influence on on our TV series because it's it's precisely as reverent as Conan Doyle was himself I he not very but an absolute essence it wild ruin is he diamond2 co-wrote the screenplay they love Sherlock Holmes and and Wilder and you grew up with the I know right I didn't know he grew up with the stories as a boy in Austria and just was devoted to them and he wants to make a musical version all kinds of things and eventually became this curious huge film one of the last of those sort of late 60s films it was going to be a roadshow picture lost an hour you may know there's there's missing portions but that's sort of part of its legend somehow isn't it it's it's sort of the whole film was about loss and the fact there's actually a missing our is kind of perfect it's just I I just adore it it was your question actually you didn't answer my question just answered every single one I'm stay with Billy Wilder a moment I'm just curious about that trend of directors particularly from Europe and and certainly many Austrian and German directors who've gone over to Hollywood going back to the silent era right through to directors such as event vendors who have their own take on a particular kind of Americana and I'm just wondering how much you feel Billy Wilder's take as an outsider has over taking Sherlock Holmes which by this time had become pretty state both in television and film and rejuvenating it I think I mean most sort of familiar thing about Wilder was that he was very cynical and his films are always we just talking about ace in the hole or Sunset Boulevard incredibly cynical films sometimes like nasty tinged them in a way but I think somehow his maybe it's his childhood nostalgia for Sherlock Holmes and then his take on on Britain but the Britain it live it represented the sort of old Empire is a lot more gentle well on them maybe not gentlemen sort of affectionate really it's a very touching film um and maybe that was to do with him by 1970 becoming a much slightly mellow or I don't know but I think it's very it's very interesting that that there isn't it's an outsider's view like James ivory who made the most English films has ever been as an American or you know people often say about Henry James as a writer his his stories are actually almost more English than we are so um I think it's um it's an outsider's view definitely but but what you get in the end whatever their original ambition is is a very nuanced and funny portrait or of something he loved but in a very particular Billy Wilder way he wanted to do something with it I think that's the key to it didn't just want to do a straight adaptation so as you'll see each each part of it certainly resonates from the original and one of the main story is sort of on the bruce-partington plans but only very tangentially but it's it's it's him and is he diamond sort of taking it and running with it and you mentioned a moment ago about this being sort of a last gasp of a particular kind of Hollywood this was made in 1970s so in 68 had Bonnie and Clyde the following year Easy Rider and what's interesting about this it's not so much narrative Lee I feel that there's a sense of a classical Hollywood director at work but sort of wistful palette that's employed for the film it has a very unique look yeah I think it does I mean as I say it's a you know you can you can make over examine these things just cause why we're here but that and that's part of the joy of it especially if you know film very well you can find a fellow enthusiast I remember meeting Jonathan Coe who is one of this film's great supporters who wrote a wonderful article about his lifelong association with this film from seeing the paper back when he was a holiday aged eight to finally finding the laserdisc with the missing bits I mean it's wonderful like sort of archaeological expedition and when you meet someone who knows the film you love like that it's it's wonderful to to to examine that but um I'm sorry I've totally lost my throne often I think that the look of the film is yes yes and and and you can sort of look at there a certain the Diogenes Club where with cigar ash and I've read I've read a whole thing about how this sort of represents this the end of empire and there the end of Victorian and the whole thing is about everything crumbling around Sherlock Holmes which is a version or I don't know it's a funny joke probably but it's it's it's definitely got a its heart is melancholy and I think that's what while they did best and it's certainly always the thing that I respond most to in anything is a sort of bittersweet quality so it's it's it's the parody is so sublime but at its heart is it's deeply touching and you write about Wilder is seems to be a director for him writers have a particular favorite I know Cassie wish eager talks ace in the hole and you mentioned earlier the Woody Allen apparently somewhere said he doesn't like some like it hot yes nice it nobody's perfect please I'm pleased I may use it again um you mentioned this is an inspiration and one of the other kind of odd Sherlock Holmes films from the 1970s that this was my first Sherlock Holmes adaptation that I've seen and I think it might be in the second with Nick Myers the 7% solution and has has that had any influence at all lawyers has it always just been this version well I just happen in the big it's it's between Rathbone and this in a way everything is canonical the way you sort of absorb it all day I remember I read the 7% solution before I saw it and I was very disappointed in the film and I sort of remain disappointed I think because Nicole Williamson Sherlock Holmes is so strange it's I don't know and then then you can't get past Robert Duvall's accent you just can't there should be a law against that oh he's a wonderful idea I just I think it's probably a better book than a film but to me this this film has has it all it's kind of and when you as I finally did see that missing bits which again in in a perfect way in themselves are incomplete there is the the soundtrack of one case and no pictures and the pictures of one case and no soundtrack so even then it's sort of substantial but um it's just wonderful to have so much of your your favorite version and what's it what's really interesting is that you know the Robert Stevens is by no means anyone's idea of Sherlock Holmes and he as you'll see he's it's a sort of it's a curious portrayals very it's almost it's very camp actually anyways a lot of I make in a very late sixties way but it sort of fits this film perfectly Colin Blakely I think is like is that almost almost the perfect dr. Watson almost and he could have played it in any number of versions I think he's just an incredibly funny man who has a heart of gold you know but it's a very particular thing and I suppose that's why I respond to his so much I I mean Christopher Lee's Mycroft though is is is directly why my Mycroft is is like that because if it felt to us that what father was doing was was taking a sort of one Joker character and making it more sophisticated that the Diogenes Club or actually sort of the British Secret Service and there behind lots of things you know and the whole idea of the the brothers having a much more fractious relationship as it was entirely from him from this film and I am writing thinking that Mycroft had appeared in full stories - stories - stories he's met he briefly appears also in the final problem he's driving the carriage that takes dr. Watson to the railway station but you only find that out in the empty house otherwise it's just two stories and you're right he did in the book she's just really seen as clever but overweight and that's pretty much yeah I've read somewhere I could be wrong but Alan Moore in extraordinary legal gentleman has him as M doesn't it yes it's clever I mean well that's it's brilliant that the film wasn't but the young the way that he absolutely you know interlaces almost every aspect of late 19th century literature is is breathtaking really and the idea of em being Mycroft being / Moriarty and everything so it's really wonderfully done there and the critical reception of the film it's quite interesting because it's late in Wilders career I think he had another five or six films in him but yes some people have suggested this may have been one of the larger nails in his career coffin because it cost so much money and it didn't work I need him work a torn it was box office and critical reception do you when's the last time you saw it and last week it's not that long ago actually but I remember I I saw it on TV and then one of my you know epiphany moments was my sister bought me a wonderful book by David Stewart Davis called homes of the movies one Christmas and I grew up with that I don't think David feels the same way anymore I either but I grew up with the idea that there was a noble failure that it's sort of starts ok and then goes downhill and you sort of you know you often do that you buy into the the idea of a film that the critical reception get oh yes it was like that and then and then obviously sometimes there is a perversity about people wanting to like the things that nobody else likes that off as we know this building is founded on the idea but sometimes it's true and sometimes it's not just build people being sort of deliberately perverse it's because actually it hadn't found its time and over the years what's wonderful about this is it's it's come it's so matured so many people love this film now and you can see it properly in the line of wireless work but very much in the in the sort of line of shark Holmes movies which as you say you know in the 60s have become after study in terror with John Neville that people just didn't know what to do with it anymore I think so I'm sure at the time it was and wild it famously never talked about on the scarcely talked about it and and in that annoying way kind of what couldn't be one round you know but I think that's that's what happens with a lot of directors if they have a commercial failure they just forget about him and I think he finally came to terms with the fact that people liked it but not as much as I think he should you know that it's it's it's such a it's a very personal work I think in a very profound way

Channel: BFIEvents

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Keywords: BFI, Mark Gatiss (Author), The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes (Film), Sherlock Holmes (Fictional Character), Billy Wilder, Sherlock (TV Program), Mark Gatiss (TV Writer), Crime Fiction (TV Genre), Sherlock Holmes (Film Character), Ian Haydn Smith, 1970, TV series, Sherlock, Holmes, American Express, Mark, Gatiss, film, films, movie, movies, british, institute, British Film Institute (Publisher)

Id: otYRcTrK1d0

Length: 13min 0sec (780 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 22 2014