''Adventures of Sherlock Holmes; or, Held for Ransom'' is a 1905 American

silent film A silent film is a film with no synchronized Sound recording and reproduction, recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) ...

directed by

J. Stuart Blackton James Stuart Blackton (January 5, 1875 – August 13, 1941) was a British-American film producer and director of the silent era. One of the pioneers of motion pictures, he founded Vitagraph Studios in 1897. He was one of the first filmmakers to ...

for

Vitagraph Studios Vitagraph Studios, also known as the Vitagraph Company of America, was a United States motion picture studio. It was founded by J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith in 1897 in Brooklyn, New York, as the American Vitagraph Company. By 1907, ...

. It was the second film based on Arthur Conan Doyle's '' Sherlock Holmes'' stories, following the 1900

Mutoscope The Mutoscope is an early motion picture device, invented by W. K. L. Dickson and Herman Casler and later patented by Herman Casler on November 21, 1894. Like Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope, it did not project on a screen and provided viewing to ...

trick film In the early history of cinema, trick films were short silent films designed to feature innovative special effects. History The trick film genre was developed by Georges Méliès in some of his first cinematic experiments, and his works remain th ...

Sherlock Holmes Baffled ''Sherlock Holmes Baffled'' is a very short American silent film created in 1900 with cinematography by Arthur Marvin. It is the earliest known film to feature Arthur Conan Doyle's detective character Sherlock Holmes, albeit in a form unlike th ...

'', and is usually regarded as the first attempt to film a "serious" Holmes adaptation. The scenario was by Theodore Liebler based on elements of Conan Doyle's 1890 novel ''

The Sign of the Four ''The Sign of the Four'' (1890), also called ''The Sign of Four'', is the second novel featuring Sherlock Holmes by British writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle wrote four novels and 56 short stories featuring the fictional detective. Plot ...

''. Robert Pohle notes that "Deprived of his voice in those early silent films, Holmes was also transformed from an intellectual, armchair detective into a more kinetic action figure—almost a sort of cowboy-in-deerstalker." Although sometimes considered a

lost film A lost film is a feature Feature may refer to: Computing * Feature (CAD), could be a hole, pocket, or notch * Feature (computer vision), could be an edge, corner or blob * Feature (software design) is an intentional distinguishing char ...

, fragments are still extant in the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...

paper print Paper prints of films were an early mechanism to establish the copyright of motion pictures by depositing them with the Library of Congress. Thomas Alva Edison’s company was first to register each frame of motion-picture film onto a positive pape ...

collection. The film was shot on 35mm black-and-white film, running to one reel of 725 feet in length.

Cast

The film was released on October 7, 1905, with H. Kyrle Bellew and J. Barney Sherry in unlisted roles. It was long believed that the film starred Maurice Costello as Sherlock Holmes, but Leslie S. Klinger has written that the identification of Costello in the role is flawed. Klinger states that the first identification of Costello with the role was in Michael Pointer's ''Public Life of Sherlock Holmes'' published in 1975 but Pointer later realized his error and wrote to Klinger stating

References

External links

* 1905 films American silent short films American black-and-white films Films directed by J. Stuart Blackton Sherlock Holmes films Lost American films Vitagraph Studios short films 1900s crime films American crime films 1900s lost films 1900s American films Silent mystery films Silent thriller films {{crime-film-stub