Un mari idéal

Hungarian immigrant Alexander Korda did more than anyone else to make the cinematic image that the United Kingdom likes to show the world. In An Ideal Husband, Korda paints a very pretty picture of Victorian London. The games played by some of its upper crust inhabitants is not so pretty.

Hugh Williams is a rising politician and a man known for strong probity supported by his equally virtuous wife Diana Wynyard. But back in the day in a move that would now be called insider trading Williams is being blackmailed by adventuress Paulette Goddard who has an indiscreet letter from back in the day.

It's a story that never sees an end. A person in public life who makes such a show of personal virtue brought down or at least threatened with an indiscretion. It's similar to Broderick Crawford in All The King's Men when he blackmailed a former judge. The answer there was suicide.

The answer here is Williams goes to his friend Michael Wilding who is a bit of an upper class rogue himself to help with Goddard. Unbeknownst to him, Wilding and Goddard have some history which does kick back against Goddard.

I can truly see Vivien Leigh in the part who was the first choice. Still Goddard who makes no attempt at an English accent comes off well. She's one sly little minx and in the end she's most definitely got a plan B ready to roll.

Of course the Oscar Wilde quotes are just rolling from the mouths of the characters. Listen close or you'll miss one. Wilde always was a sophisticated observer of the human race and sad how some of his statements came all too true in his own life.

Add C. Aubrey Smith as Wilding's father who wants him to straighten out and be like that pillar of the Empire, Williams. Also add Glynis Johns as Williams's sister who much prefers a rogue to a model of probity.

You've got a fine adaption of a great Oscar Wilde play which is a bit more serious than most of his work.

Directed by Alexander Korda, costumed by Cecil Beaton. This is a good start for any movie, but when it is based on one of Oscar Wilde's great comedies, this starts to look like a real goodie.

The cast puts Diana Wyngard as Lady Chiltern, Hugh Williams as Lord Robert, Michael Wilding as Lord Goring, Constance Collier as Lady Markby, Glynis Johns as Miss Chiltern, and C Aubrey Smith as Goring's father, Lord Caversham. With them is Paulette Goddard, mainly known for her work in the USA, as Mrs Cheveley, the woman who 'looks like she has a past'. Now, An Ideal Husband can be witty and clever, or it can be screamingly funny and farcical (I saw a wonderful stage production which was firmly the latter): the film chooses wit over low comedy, perhaps the right idea as it works very well. The ladies are sumptuously costumed as you would expect, while the script barely tampers with the original stage play.

In comparison to the slightly later movie of The Importance of Being Earnest, this film bears up well. The cast is almost ideal and work together extremely well, and the colour certainly helps (as it did in Earnest too). Well worth a look.

An ideal rendering of Oscar Wilde at his best, this is a feast for the eyes all the way through, with excellent acting by Michael Wilding, Diana Wynyard, Hugh Williams, Paulette Goddard, Glynis Johns and C. Aubrey Smith among many others, a little drowned perhaps in too much music, but never mind - the music is good as well, especially in the beginning at the grand opening scene of the soirée with all the top society of belle époque London all at their gaudiest dresses. It's difficult to say what's best in this film, who is the best actor (while I am leaning towards Diana Wynyard), if the prize goes to the colourful scenery and sets, but I think the main triumph of the film is Oscar Wilde's own dialogue, which must make every screening of this play into a success - it has been done so often. It's a joy to behold all the way, you can't tire of it, and you just want it to go on forever, even with Paulette Goddard busy at new ugly schemes of blackmail and destructive cultivation of greed - yes, this is actually Oscar Wilde's most and maybe only moral play.

Hugh Williams is a member of the Party in charge of reporting on "the Argentine Canal scheme." He is about to reject it on behalf of the government, but adventuress Paulette Goddard has an old letter of his that reveals he passed on Cabinet secrets to a stock broker years ago. Not only would this ruin him in politics, but would cause his wife, Diana Wynard, to lose her illusion of his Olympian probity - yes, I know how absurd that is - and cease to love him. Somehow, it is up to Michael Wilding, the wastrel son of Cabinet minister C. Aubrey Smith, to save the day.

There is too much serious plotting and too little lunacy to make this play top notch Oscar Wilde. Everyone tries, and it's very good, but the best scene occurs early on, when Smith confronts Wilding, and brushes aside his nonsense, leaving the younger man flustered. Miss Goddard's musings, mostly to herself, sound like stage soliloquies, and sound quite flat. Nonetheless, there are enough witticisms and the pleasure of Glynis Johns as Williams' sister who inexplicably loves the usually self-absorbed Wilding, to make this fun.

This film doesn't have a very good reputation, e.g., "slow moving" (Maltin) and "a slight, stiff play is swamped by the cast" (Halliwell). IMDb comments are mixed. Well, it does have the limitations one would expect from Korda filming a period play in lavish Technicolor. It is pictorially static, with overly bright colors. For the most part, the actors' voices are animated but their bodies are strangely inert. But in general I thought this wasn't that bad an adaptation, somewhat better than the trendy 1999 version, if only because Korda understood the period he was filming. It seems to me that Wilde's plot complications have been smoothed out a bit here (his name is not even on the credits!) so that the solution follows the problem too quickly and the whole thing can be over in 96 minutes and still have a spectacular recreation of crowds in period costume at the Ascot races. (Perhaps this is an unfair comment since IMDb notes that an original version was a half-hour longer.) With the casting and the spirited performance of Goddard, Mrs. Cheveley becomes the most animated and virile character in the film. Lady Chiltern's conception of morality should stem from a vigorous, naive idealistic vision. She should be a dynamic, slightly-otherworldly treasure with a fairytale view of the world and be the core of the film, for the plot hinges on her vision of purity. The casting and somewhat stodgy performance of Wynyard in the role weakens the story. The character becomes merely an upright, slightly stuffy moralist. Hmmm. Perhaps the criticisms directed at the film are justified. In spite of this, I quite enjoyed this, my third go-around with the play. The Importance of Being Earnest is perhaps more witty and amusing, but this story has a much more provocative drama at its core, with interesting things to say about ethics, morality and idealism. I find it odd that it is universally described as a comedy. Certainly there's a lot of pithy, epigrammatic dialogue, and some light moments, but the basic story is a clear-cut moral drama. The anguish of Sir Chiltern and his wife is real, the stakes are high and virtually life-threatening, and the moral decisions are agonizing.