ELEMENTARY CINEMA: THE EARLY FILMS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (2026)
Label: Film Masters
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 45 Minutes 24 Seconds
Audio: English PCM 2.0 Stereo with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.78:1)
Director: Daniel Griffith
Elementary Cinema: The Early Films of Sherlock Holmes is a new documentary from Daniel Griffith's Ballyhoo Motion Pictures that explores the early, pre-Basil Rathbone
cinematic versions of author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s legendary sleuth Sherlock Holmes, celebrating the film history of the world-famous sleuth who has been on film nearly since the invention of cinema itself.
The brief doc only runs about forty-five minutes and is a pretty breezy watch. beginning with the 1900 penny arcade loop “Baffled” and other early entries like 1904's Held for Ransom, A Study in Scarlet and 1916's German adaptation The Valley of Fear, on through to the very well-received John Barrymore’s 1922 Sherlock Holmes, and the lost film The Missing Rembrandt Case (1932). This doc feels pretty cursory with the short run time but even still it was still quite revelatory for me, as I was previously well unaware of the pre-Basil Rathbone iterations of the characters, so in that respect I found it all-too-brief but also altogether fascinating.
The doc utilizes newly restored footage and interviews with film historians, with narration by Mark Redfield, offer tantalizing clips of the early films that helped established the visual tropes like the deerstalker cap, the pipe, and the magnifying glass. The doc also speaks of how Sir Arthur Conan Doyle grew tired of the character and lost interest in it his creation, and how each of the films were received critically and commercially.
Audio/Video: The film arrives on region-free Blu-ray from Film Masters presented in 1080p HD widescreen (1.85:1), it's an attractively assembled doc, but the archival clips of the film are understandably lower quality, some of which are over a century old. Audio comes by way of English PCM 2.0 with optional English subtitles, and the elements sound fine, the narration is crystal clear, dialogue from some of the later "talkies" sound fine.
The extras for this mini-doc are stellar, we get over 120-minutes of newly restored shorts which is an absolute treasure trove of Sherlock Holmes shorts. It's pretty astounding to see these so well preserved and restored in HD with uncompressed audio. For the most part these look terrific, with the exception of the two versions of A Black Sherlock Holmes (1913), which look abysmal to be honest, with all manner of weird looking chemical deteriorating throughout, rendering them somewhat of unwatchable. On the other hand it also gives it a weird monochromatic-psychdelic vibe that I sort of liked, it's trippy. The full list of shorts is the 38-second Sherlock Holmes Baffled (1900), 19-min Copper Beeches (1912), 10-min Cousins of Sherlocko (1913), 13-min A Black Sherlock Holmes (Restored Cut Version, 1918), and 13-min A Black Sherlock Holmes (Restored Uncut Version, 1918).
Other Holmes video ephemera include a 7-min Mutt and Jeff Cartoon: Slick Sleuths (1926), 8-min Felix the Cat Cartoon: Sure Luck Holmes (1928), plus a 26-min Sherlock Holmes Television Episode starring Ronald Howard: The Case of the Blind Man's Bluff (1954), and a 40-min Sherlock Holmes and the Blue Carbuncle, which is a radio broadcast recreation from Redfield Arts Audio featuring the doc's narrator in the role of Sherlock Holmes.
The single-disc release arrives in a standard keepcase with a single-sided wrap. Inside there's also a 14-Page Illustrated Booklet with a new essay by Richard Heft, Holmes B.B.R. (Before Basil Rathbone) that details the actors who played Holmes on stage and screen in the pre-Basil Rathbone era.
Newly Restored Special Features:
- Short Film: Sherlock Holmes Baffled (1900, 0:38)
- Short Film: Copper Beeches (1912, 19:09)
- Short Film: Cousins of Sherlocko (1913, 9:47)
- Short Film: A Black Sherlock Holmes (Restored Cut Version, 1918, 14:18)
- Short Film: A Black Sherlock Holmes (Restored Uncut Version, 1918, 13:24)
- Mut and Jeff Cartoon: Slick Sleuths (1926, 7:15)
- Felix the Cat Cartoon: Sure Luck Holmes (1928, 7:38)
- Sherlock Holmes Television Episode starring Ronald Howard: The Case of the Blind Man's Bluff (1954, 26:29)
- Sherlock Holmes and the Blue Carbuncle, radio broadcast recreation from Redfield Arts Audio (39:47)
- 14-Page Illustrated Booklet with a new essay by Richard Heft, Holmes B.B.R. (Before Basil Rathbone)
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