As far as I can remember, and I've read the stories many times, Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes never had to deal with amnesia, which in those days of reading and writing had not yet become the most routine of plot devices. The Holmes of Billy Wilder's movie runs into amnesia straight off the bat, when Gabrielle Valladon, a handsome though mighty bedraggled woman, appears at 221-B Baker Street apparently suffering a loss of memory precipitated by both a bump on the head and a near drowning in the Thames. But there's a gimmick within the gimmick: Mme. Valladon's amnesia is totally fraudulent. The lady is in "fact" a German spy pretending loss of memory in order to insinuate herself into Holmes' sympathies.
The audience falls for it, which is not a surprise, because we watchers have been indoctrinated to willingly and enthusiastically suspend our disbelief at the slightest hint of film's most common malady. But that Holmes should succumb — well, that's a bit of a disappointment. Fictional Holmes would have been a lot more discerning, amnesia-wise, than filmic Holmes.
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