Harper Brothers case, which concerned the unauthorized 1907 production of Ben-Hur and was finally decided by the Supreme Court. Some of that promised context: Film copyrights were funky as all getout until the late-1900s to mid-1910s. What I am a little less confident about is the idea of calling this a Sherlock Holmes picture at all. So, is Sherlock Holmes Baffled technically a “film” at all? Depends on exactly how pedantic you wish to be but I’m ready to accept it as one. Here are DIY instructions.) A dressing gown does not a consulting detective make.

I want one, how about you? Apparently, there are kits you can buy to make “GIF machines” but I am too disgusted with the name to make a purchase. ( You can see a detailed demonstration of the process with a homemade Mutoscope here. Its speed depended on how fast the viewer wanted to crank. And now you see why I scoff a bit at people confidently naming exact runtimes for the film. Instead of film, they used printed cards fixed to a drum that rotated with a hand-turned crank. Mutoscopes were machines that allowed individual viewers to watch motion pictures through a peephole. At this point, the Mutoscope portion of the business was quite important. Griffith’s alma mater (the film trade was learned on the job back then). Got all that? The company is best known simply as Biograph these days and is mostly remembered as D.W. While the exact release date of this film is unknown (it wasn’t copyrighted until 1903), it is generally agreed that it was released in 1900 by the American Mutoscope Company but copyrighted by its successor, the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company. The whole thing lasts less than a minute. Thanks to the magic of trick photography, the burglar appears, disappears and gets clean away. Fasten your seatbelts, kids!įirst, the plot: A man (Sherlock?) catches a burglar in the act of, well, burgling and attempts to apprehend the miscreant. We’re going to clear some of them up, cloud the waters with some speculation and generally sink our teeth into the picture. Baffling.Īt the risk of being one of those “Actually…” people, there are a whole bunch of misconceptions about this film. Home Media Availability: Released on DVD and Bluray.

Film review sherlock holmes