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.

It took over two decades for Robert Morley to bring Oscar Wilde to the screen. Morley scored his first big break playing Oscar Wilde in what might be described as an off Drury Lane theater because homosexuality was the love that dare not speak its name in 1936. In 1960 in America it was still not spoken though in the United Kingdom it was starting to get a whisper or two.

One of the great men of literature was brought down by Victorian mores and justice when he happened to run afoul of a monstrously homophobic father who accused him of seducing his son.

The movie-going public had a double dose of Oscar Wilde in 1960 with Peter Finch giving an equally brilliant performance as Wilde in another film which is seen a lot more often because the producer had the foresight to do it in color. So Morley's feature kind of took a back seat.

Both films concentrate totally on the trial, the first one for libel that Wilde stupidly brought against the Marquis of Queensbury, father of his inamorata Lord Alfred Douglas. Douglas is played by young John Neville and he's a weak callow youth. I thought Neville's interpretation of the part lacking the bite that John Fraser's had in the Finch film or of Jude Law in the 1997 film Wilde which starred Stephen Fry.

In the Citadel Film series book on the Films of James Mason, Mason himself said that he liked what Ralph Richardson did with the part of Edward Carson better than his own performance. Richardson could easily have been labeled the shark of Old Bailey. He is devastatingly brilliant in his performance. Mason's words were extremely generous to a colleague he obviously respected and admired. Mason was Carson in the Peter Finch film and he was pretty good himself.

Phyllis Calvert was the long suffering Mrs. Wilde with whom Oscar had two sons. Poor Wilde was born a hundred years too soon. Today he'd be Ian McKellan and proudly marry Lord Alfred Douglas for better or worse, richer or poorer. Given Bosy's habits it would have been poorer very soon.

Robert Morley was a great actor who could play a great range of parts from comic to tragic. We're fortunate indeed to have his breakthrough performance preserved

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.

Across the decades, cinematic directors have sought to discover the essence of the noted 18th century humorous, poet and playwright Oscar Wilde. Some films shower him with so many accolades, they drown his image in wine and sexual innuendos. Other movies hardly delve into the magical but certainly secret complexity of the talented English writer, using his notorious trial, tribulations and eventual imprisonment as Gris, reducing him to a mere scandalous shell of his life. Perhaps, there are many film versions of Mr. Wilde, but only one stands out which personifies the ideal man. I believe this offering, "Oscar Wilde," (1960) portrayed by enormously talented Robert Morley as the playwright, is the best. True Mr. Morley is such a versatile actor in other films, some would suggest his comic side, or his stuffy, droll demeanor, detract from this impressive writer. I disagree. Despite his inner personal conflicts, Morley exemplifies the quick wit, delightful charm and social elegance befitting the true character of the 18th century cosmopolitan gentleman. Moreley more than adequately depicts the larger than life of Oscar Wilde. Ralph Richardson, plays, Sir Edward Carson the prosecuting attorney who's sole ambition was to destroy the popular writer and his libertine attitudes. Although seeking to protect the upper-class from scandal, his attack was nothing short of evisceral. As one newspaper noted at the trial, the prosecutor was seen to be as objective as a circling shark. All in all, this film is an excellent attempt at epitomizing the historical icon, and is accepted as the very best to-date. ****

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 ****