The most painfully long drawn out gay joke ever.

Swan Lake. Lockness Monster. Dual identities. bere in mind this movie was well over 3 hours originally and obviously stuff was cut.

It was all about raising [sic] the issue of Holmes's sexuality and relationships with women, which is the chief theme of the movie.

I could have done without all of the group dancing, which seemed endless, but actually was there to show the dancers' reaction to the "revelation" about Watson's sexuality. But that was a set piece, it could have been removed with no damage to the film as a whole.

Here is a great analysis from a book about the director:

http://books.google.com/books?id=6kKX1n0kCJ8C&pg=PA148&lpg=PA1 48&dq=%22Mr.+and+Mrs.+Ashdown%22&source=bl&ots=45jZnDombT& amp;sig=ExejFHzveZWDgKzQuW5DAUxTwr0&hl=en&ei=RmDATZvVM_PQiALBn rWnAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&sqi=2 &ved=0CEYQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=%22Mr.%20and%20Mrs.%20Ashdown%22& amp;f=false

You--lighten up. You--big trouble. You--get in the car.

And by the way, in spite of all of the reading between the lines that one can do in this movie, I believe that Wilder's intention was to present Holmes as decidedly NOT gay but also not able to maintain a relationship with a real woman.

You--lighten up. You--big trouble. You--get in the car.

It may not have been the most original of the four episodes (not counting the introduction in 1969 London). "Beautiful woman wants to be impregnated by intelligent man to have child that is both beautiful and intelligent" is an old anecdote, which some have responded to with the following: "What if the child has the looks of the father and the brains of the mother?" The studio, for whatever reason, decided to keep this episode over the other two comic ones. As for the pacing: each of the four episodes (or five, if you count the introduction) was given its appropriate duration, some longer, some shorter. I would have liked to have seen the upside-down room story myself, but the studio decided to keep the ballet dancer episode and the German spy one and reduce the intro to a minute, so that is what you have.

Not only was the one scene concerning the ballet dancers drawn out, so was the entire film. Take, for example, the search for the correct castle. The time spent showing various scenery was truly a waste. Was the audience of 1970 so much more easy to please than today's audience (2013)? The whole reputation of Sherlock Holmes as a brilliant detective and the superiority of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as a writer are both marginalized by this movie.