Sherlock Holmes Baffled
About Sherlock Holmes Baffled
Sherlock Holmes walks into his drawing room and finds a burglar stuffing a sack. Holmes grabs him. The man vanishes and reappears. Each time Holmes closes in, the thief is gone again, and the sack goes with him.
Cast & crew
More about Sherlock Holmes Baffled
Arthur Marvin photographed the trick film for American Mutoscope and Biograph. It was made for Mutoscope arcade machines and runs about 30 seconds. It was produced in 1900 and registered for copyright in 1903. Some prints carry that 1903 notice. The actors are not named. It is the earliest known film with Conan Doyle's detective.
Themes
Making
Marvin shot it as a single-room gag for a hand-cranked Mutoscope, not as a projected story.
Look
Arthur Marvin photographed the drawing-room theft and the vanish, using a stop-substitution so the burglar leaves the frame between frames.
Technique
The burglar's exits are stop-motion substitutions inside a shot of about 30 seconds.
Preservation
Assumed lost for years. Rediscovered in 1968 as a paper print at the Library of Congress. A viewing copy is on the Internet Archive.
Notes
- The disappearance is a stop-motion substitution, the standard trick of the Mutoscope period.
- Holmes here does not wear the later screen costume of the deerstalker and cape as a fixed outfit. The figure is only loosely the detective of the stories.
- The film was treated as lost until a paper print turned up at the Library of Congress in 1968.
- The Internet Archive identifier is SherlockHolmesBaffled.
- Biograph copyrighted it in 1903, three years after it was made.
Scenes
- Holmes seizes the burglar and the man disappears, then pops back with the sack.
Influenced by
- Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle
Also available
- Internet Archive (SherlockHolmesBaffled)