Oscar Wilde

Whatever money was spent on this movie certainly didn't go on the sets, the furniture looks as though it was assembled by a local handyman and the trial scenes, which make up the largest part of the film, seem to be taking place in a converted church hall or school gymnasium with hastily constructed props. However this happens to be a very good film indeed, the superb acting carries the film and makes it far better than the more lavish Peter Finch version which was released about the same time.

I've always thought of Robert Morley as just a comic character playing himself but here he really becomes Oscar Wilde. You can imagine Wilde talking and behaving as he does in this movie . The verbal exchanges between Morley as Wilde and Ralph Richardson as the prosecutor are magnificent. Wilde enjoying the limelight, plays to the gallery and wins every one of the exchanges until he gets too confident, makes one fatal error and then the prosecutor starts to chip away at his defense.

The minor characters are uniformly well acted with Phyllis Calvert as Wilde's wife, Dennis Price as his loyal friend and Edward Chapman as the boorish Marquis of Queensbury . John Neville is probably a little too old to play Sir Alfred Douglas but his skilful acting makes it work . The final scenes between Wilde and his family are very touching.

Well worth seeing.

The other comment describes Sir Edward Carson as the prosecutor of Oscar Wilde. That's incorrect.

What happened was that, in a fit of madness, Oscar Wilde sued the Marquis of Queensbury (the father of his lover, Sir Alfred Douglas and the author of the rules of modern boxing) for slander, based on an accusation by Queensbury that Wilde was a 'somdomite' (sic). All of Wilde's friends tried to talk him out of it - Victorian England worked on a 'don't ask, don't tell' basis, and Wilde was quite safe had he done nothing. But his success as a playwright emboldened him, and he filed suit.

Carson was retained by the Marquis to defend him. The famous cross-examination occurred during the trial of Wilde's slander complaint. He was destroyed on cross examination, in such a way that the nature of his lifestyle became too public to be ignored. Carson, after he had won the slander case, actually tried to dissuade the Crown from prosecuting, but to no avail. A criminal prosecution did follow, in which Carson was not involved, ending in Wilde's conviction, and a 2 year prison sentence that effectively ended his career and life.

Carson, an Irish Protestant, earned my own condemnation for his role in opposing Irish independence. But in the Wilde case, he was responding for the defense, and he took active steps thereafter to prevent a prosecution. Wilde was the principal cause of his own legal destruction.

Without a doubt, this is the film to see if you are deeply interested in this unconventional and fabulous writer that was Oscar Wilde. Two other films about him were shot: "the Trials of Oscar Wilde" and Brian Gilbert's work in 1997 but they aren't found wanting to Gregory Ratoff's version.

Of course, it's indisputable that Ratoff's film was made with restricted means as the cheap scenery testify. It sometimes gives way to drawbacks like in the very last sequence which shows Wilde after his lost trial sitting at the terrace of a Parisian café and next to him, one can hear a musician playing the accordion. A perfect cliché about France. But it's minor quibble and anyway, given the means Ratoff had at his disposal, was there another way to show the audience that Wilde was in Paris under the pseudonym of Sébastien Melmott? Anyway, one can eminently forget the scenery and admire how Ratoff conceived his film. First, he eschewed many traps of the biopic film including the following one: to relate all Wilde's life from his childhood. He chose to steer his film on the period of his life which began with the relationship Wilde developed with his young protégé Lord Alfred Douglas. In a nutshell, this scandalous love (for the time) was the beginning of the end for the witty writer who fell foul of the chic, posh Victorian society. As everyone knows, homosexuality was banned in this very conservative, ossified society and it could only end up as a trial for Wilde. A trial he could only lose but during which he showed a stalwart courage thanks to his own witty answers. This trial is the pinnacle of the film and Ratoff succeeds in incorporating elements of Wilde's anterior life like the introduction at the outset of his wondrous novel "the Picture of Dorian Gray" (1889). And one can only admire his style to film the evolution of this trial and the verbal exchanges between Wilde and sir Edward Carson. At first, Wilde seems sure of himself and his cues make the audience laugh but bit by bit confidence leaves him as he is dwarfed by dogged Carson's ruthless questions. In the long run, Ratoff weaves a stifling atmosphere and it's impossible not to feel it.

All you have to do is to sit and admire the quality of the dialogs and also of the actors. Robert Morley confers to his main character the wit and wisdom which made Wilde famous. And Ralph Richardson equally delivers a prime performance. But John Neville seems too old for the role Lord Alfred Douglas. In the most recent version, Jude Law was a better choice thanks to his relatively young age.

Of course, this film will never supersede a good book about one of the most crucial writers who existed on this planet but Ratoff's work makes him justice.

Ralph Richardson and Robert Morley engage in one of the most gripping courtroom exchanges on film. Wilde gradually comes to realize that he's in a trap, and that the mind that set the trap is as keen as his own. That is the essence of this film. We forget what a wonderful actor was Richardson. This is an extraordinary performance. Alexander Knox also gives a spine-chilling performance as Wilde's advocate, as he comes to realize that the libel suit is a small issue compared to what is coming. The courtroom scenes are so spare and so taut and so perfectly scripted that the viewer is spellbound. I challenge the first time viewer to see it without recourse to rewinding - I was unable to resist watching the same exchange time after time. Morley is a little severe as Wilde but captures the sense of horror and desperation he feels as he is ground down by the rapier attack of Richardson, who uses Wilde's own urbanity against him. His strategy is to get Wilde to impeach himself out of vanity and pride. A similar scene plays out in "A Few Good Men", to which this film would be justly compared.

In Victorian England, with homosexuality forbidden and punishable by up to two years in prison, celebrated playwright and author Oscar Wilde finds himself defending his lifestyle in court after initiating a libel suit against the Marquis of Queensberry--also the tyrannical father of Wilde's young lover, who has accused the two men of "unnatural acts". Director Gregory Ratoff, working from Jo Eisinger's screenplay adaptation of Leslie and Sewell Stokes' 1936 play, gets a wonderful rhythm going in the film's early sequences--aided by Robert Morley's superb reprisal of his stage role as Wilde. Still, the later trial sequences (though well-performed and necessarily claustrophobic) are hardly suspenseful or exciting. Morley's Wilde is put through the proverbial legal wringer, while his useless counsel seems to want nothing more than to concede defeat. The finale, too, with Wilde freed but destitute and delusional, is disheartening. The Oscar Wilde story is certainly one of high drama and decadence, yet this document just scratches the surface of its possibilities. **1/2 from ****