98-yr-old silent 'Sherlock Holmes' movie found in Paris

The long-lost silent movie 'Sherlock Holmes' that was made in 1916 has been found in the Cinematheque Francaise film archive in Paris.

The project features the only surviving performance by American actor William Gillette, who died in 1937, as Sherlock Holmes, introducing many of the detective's most familiar character traits, like the deerstalker hat, curved or "bent briar" pipe, his use of a magnifying glass and syringe and his amateur violin playing, the Independent reported.

Russell Merritt, the supervising editor for the restoration of the newly discovered film, said that finally they got to see the actor who kept the first generation of Sherlockians spellbound.

Merritt continued that as far as Holmes is concerned, there's not an actor dead or alive who hasn't consciously or intuitively played off Gillette.

The film, which is now undergoing a digital restoration in time, is to be screened at the Cinematheque's Toute la Memoire du Monde festival in Paris in January, 2015.