Opening Night for the Toronto Silent Film Festival

Live musical accompaniment by William O'Meara

$15 in advance or at the door

The Game's Afoot! Move over Benedict Cumberbatch--Daddy's back in town!

“One of the Holy Grails of lost films. The image quality of the restored Sherlock Holmes is astonishing, and today’s viewers are being treated to a better-looking film than even the original audience experienced.”-Robert Byrne, San Francisco Silent Film Festival

“In 1916, with over a thousand performances of his theatrical hit Sherlock Holmes behind him, legendary William Gillette shot the screen adaptation of his hit play. It would be his only performance in a feature film.

Sherlock Holmes packs enough action, intrigue, and humor to show even skeptical modern viewers how delightful an early feature film can be. From the “lowest and vilest alleys in London” to the “lonely houses” of the countryside, characters rove the smoky, burnished universe of Doyle’s canon, instantly familiar to a century’s plus worth of readers.

The film faithfully retains the play’s famous set pieces—Holmes’s encounter with Professor Moriarty, his daring escape from the Stepney Gas Chamber, and, of course, the tour-de-force deductions. It also illustrates how the original stage play, from which this is based , was structured as it wove bits from Conan Doyle’s stories ranging from “A Scandal in Bohemia” to “The Final Problem,” into a thoroughly original, innovative mystery film.

Gillette made Holmes real in a way that satisfied legions of fans. Indeed, Orson Welles remarked, “It is too little to say that William Gillette resembles Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock Holmes looks exactly like William Gillette.” Gillette not only lent his aquiline profile to the character, but also contributed to the Holmes image by adding the drop-stem pipe, lavish dressing gown, and iconic deerstalker.

And, for almost a century, Gillette’s Sherlock Holmes went unseen until 2014, when a nitrate print of the film—long presumed lost—turned up in France. Just as the immortal sleuth returned from his presumed watery grave in the Reichenbach Falls to continue his adventures, the 1916 Sherlock Holmes came back to us from the land of the lost to enchant a new generation. The game’s afoot again for Gillette’s detective, and it’s an adventure to remember”.-Nora Fiore @Nitrate Diva

Co-presenters: The Bootmakers of Toronto & The Friends of the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection

Festival runs April 6-11 +23rd at various cinemas throughout Toronto.

Advance tickets available from the website