Director Billy Wilder's personal and rather melancholy look at the Baker Street sleuth comes at you in sections and, indeed, was originally a much longer film running close to three and a half hours. Robert Stephens is whimsical as Holmes, Irene Handl priceless as Mrs Hudson. The lyrical interludes don't work as well as the parts that owe most to Conan Doyle, but the enterprise sparkles with wit and polish and the ending is as exciting as it is preposterous.