Film Forum

(1916, Arthur Berthelet ) Actor/playwright William Gillette (Too Much Johnson) was one of the greatest stage luminaries of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most famous by far, though, for his play Sherlock Holmes — an adaptation green-lighted by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself — and for his essaying of the title role, which he played over 1300 times, from 1899 to 1932. The first — and once considered the definitive — stage Sherlock, Gillette’s Holmes has long been relegated to photographs in musty theatrical histories. That is, until the discovery last year of this long-thought-lost film adaptation of the play, revealing a mix of 19th-century melodramatic acting styles with an extraordinarily subtle and modern performance by Gilette as Doyle’s master detective. Restored by the Cinémathèque Française and The San Francisco Silent FIlm Festival. DCP courtesy Flicker Alley.