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

silent film A silent film is a film without synchronized 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) or key lines of dialogue may, w ...

directed by J. Stuart Blackton 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 Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a British writer and physician. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for ''A Study in Scarlet'', the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Hol ...

's ''

Sherlock Holmes Sherlock Holmes () is a Detective fiction, fictional detective created by British author Arthur Conan Doyle. Referring to himself as a "Private investigator, consulting detective" in his stories, Holmes is known for his proficiency with obser ...

'' stories, following the 1900

Mutoscope The Mutoscope is an early motion picture device, invented by W. K. L. Dickson and Herman Casler and granted to Herman Casler on November 5, 1895. Like Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope, it did not project on a screen and provided viewing to only ...

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 ...

Sherlock Holmes Baffled ''Sherlock Holmes Baffled'' is an American silent film, silent trick film created in 1900 with cinematography by Arthur Marvin. It is the Adaptations of Sherlock Holmes#Film, earliest known film to feature Arthur Conan Doyle's detective charact ...

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

''. 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 A deerstalker is a type of cap that is typically worn in rural areas, often for hunting, especially deer stalking. Because of the cap's popular association with the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, it has become stereotypical headgear f ...

." Although sometimes considered a

lost film A lost film is a feature film, feature or short film in which the original negative or copies are not known to exist in any studio archive, private collection, or public archive. Films can be wholly or partially lost for a number of reasons. ...

, fragments are still extant in the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...

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 pap ...

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 Maurice George Costello (February 22, 1877 – October 29, 1950) was a prominent American vaudeville actor of the late 1890s and early 1900s who later played a principal role in early American films as leading man, supporting player, and director ...

as Sherlock Holmes, but

Leslie S. Klinger Leslie S. Klinger is an American attorney and writer. He is a noted literary editor and annotator of classic genre fiction, including the Sherlock Holmes stories and the novels ''Dracula'', ''Frankenstein'', and ''Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and ...

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 crime films Lost American mystery films Lost silent American films Vitagraph Studios short films 1900s crime films 1900s lost films 1900s American films Silent American mystery films Silent American thriller films 1900s English-language films English-language crime films {{crime-film-stub