Sherlock Holmes, according to Conan Doyle, "never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer," but the seventies saw fit to probe the "human potential" of the emotionally unfathomable detective, first in Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes and then in The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, based on Nicholas Meyer's novel. Happily, both films mock their mission with large doses of self-irony, making them thoroughly enjoyable forays into literary fantasy spun wildly and elegantly upon the screen. The premise of The Seven-Per-Cent Solution is an engagingly obvious joke: Holmes encounters the world's greatest detective, Sigmund Freud. Nicol Williamson's Holmes is debilitated by a 100% addiction to cocaine, plagued by visions from his childhood and obsessed with an emblem of evil in the diminutive person of Professor Moriarty (Laurence Olivier in a bit of brilliant casting). Freud is played by Alan Arkin as a non-authoritarian, kindly genius and he disarms Holmes' frantic bombast precisely with these unlikely traits. Together they rescue a drug-addicted damsel in distress (Vanessa Redgrave) but it is another, more compelling puzzle-what happened to Sherlock, the little boy, to make Holmes, the man, an addict-that is unraveled as we go. The answer is grim, but theatrical; what we have here is an innocent Singing Detective.