novelist Jonathan Coe's search for the uncut Wilder masterpiece Private Life of Sherlock Holmes

"Of course I have a copy of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes on video, but I don't watch it very often. I even have, on tape now, the audio and video versions of those missing scenes. But it comforts me to know that they are still incomplete, and that there remain other scenes from the film which are lost, perhaps irretrievably. This is how it should be. After all, I have not really been searching for the complete film all these years. I have been searching for something even more unreachable: trying to recapture, somehow, the sense of wonder, of security, of happiness I felt when I first saw the film on that Sunday evening, when it made me forget, for two blissful hours, my fear of returning to school the next day. It is that young self I have been trying to bring back to life. "