What is the title of the first known film to feature Sherlock Holmes, released in 1900?

The first known film to feature Sherlock Holmes, released in 1900, was Sherlock Holmes Baffled.

This American silent trick film was made by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, with Arthur Marvin serving as director and cinematographer. It lasts roughly 30 seconds and was designed for the Mutoscope, a coin-operated viewing machine that showed moving images to one person at a time rather than projecting them onto a screen.

The film’s plot is a playful departure from Conan Doyle’s detective stories. A thief repeatedly appears and disappears while stealing a sack of objects from Holmes, leaving the detective unable to solve the immediate mystery. Stop-motion substitutions create the vanishing effects, making the short an early showcase for cinematic trickery rather than a serious adaptation.

The identities of the actors who played Holmes and the burglar were not recorded. Thought lost for decades, the film was rediscovered in 1968 as a paper print in the Library of Congress collection. Its title is sometimes confused with later Holmes films, including the 1905 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes; or, Held for Ransom.