The Gillette Jollification

The Big Three, Russell, Céline, and Rob—they were swarmed
by autograph-seekers at the program's end.

As excited as we are at the prospect of seeing the great detective on the big screen, SFSFF cannot overstate how delighted the Sherlockians are that we and the Cinémathèque Française are restoring the 1916 William Gillette Sherlock Holmes. (It premieres in Paris this weekend and at our festival in May.) So delighted are they that the Sherlock Holmes Society of London devoted their annual celebration to a jollification of Mr. Gillette, culminating in a gripping keynote delivered by the restoration's research and development director, SFSFF Board Member and Professor Russell Merritt ("a foreign gentleman of exceedingly high rank").

Joining Russell in the merrymaking were film restorer and SFSFF Board President Rob Byrne, Cinémathèque Française Directrice des collections films Céline Ruivo, and some 170-odd other attendees crammed into the oversubscribed event.

Rob Byrne leans back to photo-bomb Russell and SHSL Chair Bob Ellis

As Rob wrote in his post-jollification report, "After toasts to the Queen, to Doyle, to Watson, and Sherlock, Russell held the floor captivated with the details of his findings on the history of the film and how a negative of this 1916 American feature finally found its way to Paris after the conclusion of the Great War. It is a tale worthy of the great detective himself!"

Sherlockians from around the globe gathered for the banquet, which was was held in the House of Commons members dining room at Westminster Palace (aka Parliament). Delegations from as far away as Japan and Australia were in attendance, in addition to the usual suspects from Europe and the Americas."

The event program was a masterpiece unto itself! (Click below pictures to enlarge and read the details.) Russell said he was honored to be the first American to address the Society. He joins the esteemed ranks of past speakers Agatha Christie, Anthony Hopkins, P.D. James, and Stephen Fry!

Click to enlarge

Russell's keynote paper will be published in the next edition of the Sherlock Holmes Journal, but in the meantime, here's a small excerpt from his 1/10/2015 Saturday Review of Literature article that touches on some of the details of the restoration:

Frame by frame, scene by scene [Rob Byrne] examines the film for blotches and other kinds of damage that have crept in over the past 100 years, and he applies his fixes with the click of a mouse. The results are stunning. As the scratches are removed, the images stabilized, and distortions created by warped frames corrected, we get to see details in the negative that would have been invisible to audiences watching the movie on the crude projectors of the silent era. Occasionally it's a matter of TMI. With the images this sharp, no one will be fooled by Holmes under the plainly fake hair and putty he uses for disguise. Gillette himself, apparently ageless when seen in the uncorrected original, is betrayed by a wrinkle or two befitting a 62-year-old in the restored version. But otherwise, the micro-movements and nuances Gillette builds into his performance, the quiet gestures that became his trademark, are easier than ever to savor.

We cannot wait to savor them, either! For a tiny taste of Gillette's artistry right now, see the BBC's recent article, complete with video and audio clips.