I think I'd already started university when I was reading and re-reading and re-re-reading a big compendium about Sherlock Holmes movies, a very detailed, exhaustive study of Holmes films starting with the silent era (the cover was in bright pink for some reason). It's still somewhere in my parents' house, along with my other Holmesian books, but I don't have it here and can't remember the title.
Anyway, I had read this book so many times, that I felt I'd actually seen many of the Holmes films (most of them shown here), the Peter Cushing and Basil Rathbone films, etc, etc. Although I hadn't. The same was true of the Billy Wilder film, "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes" with Robert Stephens, Colin Blakely and Genevieve Page.
This was in the olden days before internet, before DVDs and NetFlix, etc. Videos were slowly becoming available, but hideously expensive, and I certainly couldn't find one for this film. So I was familiar with the general plotline and the actors in it, but hadn't actually seen it. Then eventually, alas, I forgot about it. But with the advent of "Sherlock", and reading/hearing Steve Moffat and Mark Gatiss rave about it so, and refer to it so in their commentaries, I thought, well I have to watch this, don't I? A DVD version was available, so I did.
I hadn't realised that "A Scandal in Belgravia" was so heavily influenced by this film. I think it's fair to say that as much as "Scandal" is loosely based on Conan Doyle's "A Scandal in Bohemia", it's also very much loosely based on "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes".
As usual, I took notes as I watched "The Private Life", focusing mainly on how Moffat/Gatiss paid homage to the bits and pieces in this gem of a Holmes film.
- At the start of the film, Holmes is bored, despondent, desperate for a good, meaty case, and callously dismisses what he considers are trivial appeals (e.g. the missing midgets); yet they all end up being connected to the real case. The same happened in "Scandal" (the missing corpses) as well as in "Hounds". Remember Bluebell?
- Holmes complains to Mrs. Hudson of having cleaned the dust in the room. In "The Reichenbach Fall", Sherlock talks about the break in the dust line, asking Mrs. H which parts of the room she had cleaned.
- And like Sherlock in the beginning of "Hounds", Holmes here says he envies Watson, his placid mind....
- Holmes is experimenting with tobacco ash, and has classified 140 different kinds of ashes. That's from "The Sign of Four". In contrast, Sherlock has classified 243 types by the time of "Scandal".
- Holmes is taking a bath in his room. Please have a bath scene in "Sherlock" ;P
- Famously, this is the Holmes film in which Holmes himself uses the gay joke ("caprice of nature") to wiggle out of a predicament. Watson is furious.
- Whilst Holmes is talking about how as a bachelor living with a bachelor for the past five years, he's had "five, very happy years," Watson is dancing himself silly with a swarm of ballerinas, a red posy stuck in his hair. The way rumour travels round the room while the centre of attention is dancing away is very similar to the ball room scene in "My Fair Lady".
This film was released in 1970, the film "My Fair Lady" in 1964 (the musical opened in 1956), so I'm sure the similarities are coincidental, but Holmes's lines like, "I don't dislike women, I merely mistrust them," or "Women are so unreliable," is totally Higgins (well, the Higgins character is very Holmesian to begin with, anyway). And of course, Stanley Holloway makes an appearance!
Speaking of Higgins being Holmesian, the scene where the ballerina propositions to Holmes to make an offspring with her looks and Holmes's brains, is very reminiscent of the famous conversation between George Bernard Shaw and Sarah Bernhardt:
Sarah Bernhardt: Mr. Shaw, you and I should make love, for with my looks and your brains we would have wonderful children.
George Bernard Shaw: But what if the child were born with my looks and your brain?
(I don't know if this is historical or anecdotal, but it's still very funny. Oh, by the way, George Bernard Shaw is the playwright who wrote "Pygmalion" which eventually became "My Fair Lady". The Higgins-Pickering pair living in 27A Wimpole Street is VERY reminiscent of Holmes-Watson in 221B Baker Street, and only a few streets away, but I totally digress)
- Since this is a Billy Wilder film, the dialogue is deliciously witty.
Watson: Maybe Mrs. Hudson is entertaining.
Holmes: I never found her so.
or, when a mysterious damsel in distress arrives in Baker Street:
Watson: We just found out she's Belgian.
Mrs. H: Poor thing.
and the following morning:
Woman: Which one of you is Sherlock Holmes and which is Dr. Watson?
Holmes: Dr. Watson is the handsome one.
Woman: (faints) aaaaah.
Holmes: That's the way he affects most women.
Hahahaha.
- Holmes yells at a distraught woman in order to make her talk. He also later shouts "Stop it!" to a frantic woman who's just seen her husband's corpse. Sherlock does the same to the boarding school housemistress in "The Reichenbach Fall".
- A woman approaches Holmes totally naked. Ah. Where've I seen that before?
- This version of Mycroft by Christopher Lee is the Mycroft Moffat/Gatiss wanted to revisit. In her Majesty's Secret Service. Totally sleek and sly. Whilst Mark Gatiss's Mycroft has a yoyo-ing weight problem, it seems Christopher Lee's Mycroft has recurring gout.
- Queen Victoria is a great fan of Holmes through Watson's writings. So was the "illustrious client" in "Scandal".
- You're much better than most of our people working for British intelligence says this Mycroft as does the Gatiss Mycroft to Irene.
- As Sherlock managed to solve the mystery only to realise it was a plot ("Flight of the Dead") concocted by Mycroft, so does Holmes deduce and pursue the mystery of the hapless woman only to discover….
SPOILER ALERT
… that the answer is an elaborate and secret plot put together by Mycroft.
And another spoiler alert.
- She's arrested and executed in Japan. The movie ends on that sad note. That's why in "Scandal", Sherlock had to go and save Irene, says Moffat/Gatiss. I see....