Long-lost Sherlock Holmes movie found

A nearly 100-year-old silent Sherlock Holmes movie starring American actor and playwright William Gillette has been found at the Cinematheque Francaise archive in Paris.

The French archive team has teamed up with the organisers of the San Francisco Film Festival in California to create a digital restoration of the movie, which will be unveiled at the Cinamatheque Francais' festival of film restoration in Paris in January. The film was directed by Arthur Berthelet in 1916, reports hollywoodreporter.com. Gillette frequently portrayed Holmes on stage, and is known as the leading interpreter of Arthur Conan Doyle's iconic character. The newly discovered Essanay production is the only surviving example of Gillette's performance as Holmes and is also the only film Gillette ever made.

It retains the famous set pieces in Gillette's play about Holmes’ encounter with Professor Moriarty, his escape from the Stepney Gas Chamber and his tour-de-force deductions.

"At last we get to see for ourselves the actor who kept the first generation of Sherlockians spellbound. As far as Holmes is concerned, there's not an actor dead or alive who hasn't consciously or intuitively played off Gillette," said Russell Merritt, the supervising editor of the restoration project.