Century-Old Silent Sherlock Holmes Film Gets Chicago Area Premiere

By Joel Wicklund in Arts & Entertainment on Sep 9, 2015 5:55PM

Photo still: © 2015, Flicker Alley

In a coup for its revived movie programming, the Northbook Public Library will present the Chicago area premiere of the recently rediscovered 1916 silent feature, Sherlock Holmes. Made in Chicago at the historic Essanay Studios, the film shows at 7:30 p.m. in the library's newly remodeled auditorium Wednesday evening.

As perhaps fitting a Holmes movie, there have been some twists and turns in finding out when and where this nearly century-old movie would return for a local public screening. A planned premiere of the restored feature at St. Augustine College (where the Essanay Studios once stood) this summer was cancelled. Then the Chicago International Film Festival announced it would show the film, describing it as a "once-in-a-lifetime treat" on their website.

While the chance to see this long unavailable movie again is indeed a treat, CIFF's showing seems a little less momentous now that Northbrook will get there first (though many city dwellers will prefer seeing it downtown in October over a long drive north to see it this week). But we see this less as a black eye for CIFF than a gold star for the Northbrook Public Library, which has long had the best ongoing movie revival series in the suburbs.

Northbrook's new facility features more comfortable, stadium-styled seating, a larger screen, and DCP projection capabilities (while maintaining their 35mm projector). The film will show Wednesday night at 7:30 p.m.

This event marks another minor setback for CIFF, which over the weekend had to pull the Aretha Franklin documentary, Amazing Grace, from its schedule after the singer filed an injunction to stop it from showing at the Telluride Film Festival.