Un mari idéal

Avoided this for years because of its underwhelming reputation, and was delighted by a recent TCM showing. It's a fine filming of a muckraking Wilde comedy, in which, typically of the author, observations about class and sex and money are often dropped in, not to further the plot, just to allow Wilde to epigrammatically vent as only he could. It's a ravishing production in eye-popping Technicolor, swamped by Cecil Beaton gowns and played by a most competent cast. If Diana Wynyard's moral righteousness becomes a little wearying, I suspect it's the character rather than her playing of it, and she's matched splendidly by Hugh Williams' tortured, blackmailed statesman. Michael Wilding was never better, Glynis Johns is young and comely, and Paulette Goddard not only maintains a convincing accent but absolutely catches the charm, opportunism, and wise verbal sparring the character needs. It's a fine companion piece to the matchless "Importance of Being Earnest" of five years later, and much more eye-catchingly cinematic.

This is visually a beatiful costume film by Cecil Beaton. Add Oscar Wilde's brittle dialogue, put Paulette Goddard in the leading role as Mrs. Chesney with England's top drawer supporting cast (Michael Wilding, Diana Wynyard, Glynis Johns and Hugh Williams) and you have excellent drawing room comedy.

Goddard holds her own opposite such a luminous cast as this. Upon her entrance in Beaton's exquisite gown with feathers in her hat, she dominates the screen with her glamour. There is an elegance in Goddard that wasn't seen too much in previous roles. She has matured into a fine actress from her early days of romantic comedy and DeMille epics. Nice change.

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.

Oscar Wilde is often thought of as a primarily comic playwright, but of his seven completed plays only one, "The Importance of Being Earnest" is a pure comedy. Three other plays are sometimes bracketed with it as "drawing-room comedies", but all three are in many ways problem plays, combining plenty of witty dialogue with serious examination of social issues. In "Lady Windermere's Fan" and "A Woman of No Importance" these are questions of sexual morality, whereas "An Ideal Husband" revolves around political corruption, questions of honour, and the relationship between the sexes.

"An Ideal Husband" has been filmed four times. There were two separate adaptations in the late nineties, made only a year apart, but, oddly, the first version was made in Germany in 1935. Given the Nazi detestation of homosexuality, it seems strange that they should have chosen to film a work by a famously gay author. This 1947 version, however, is the only one I have seen. It is an early example of the British "heritage cinema" style, being made in colour, which was still the exception rather than the rule in the British cinema of the forties, and featuring the lavish period sets and costumes which were later to become the hallmark of films set in the Victorian era.

The action is set in London in 1895. Sir Robert Chiltern, a wealthy and successful politician, is approached at a party one evening by a mysterious woman named Mrs. Cheveley, who attempts to blackmail him to support a fraudulent scheme in which she has invested. She says that she knows, and can prove, that earlier in his career he was guilty of selling a state secret for money, and threatens him with exposure unless he makes a speech to the House of Commons recommending that the British Government support her scheme. The film then explores the complications which arise from this and Mrs Cheveley's other machinations.

Two key characters are Sir Robert's wife Gertrude and his closest friend Lord Arthur Goring. At first Goring seems to one of Wilde's witty but foppish young men, a gilded dandy whose main talent is for uttering bons mots like "Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not", but in the end he proves to be a loyal and resourceful friend to Sir Robert. Gertrude Chiltern is high-minded and idealistic, but can be inflexible and unforgiving; she finds it difficult to make allowances for those, even her husband, whose moral principles are not as rigid as her own. The need to atone for one's past misdeeds, and the need to allow others to atone for theirs, is one of the key themes of the play. "No one should be entirely judged by their past." Although "An Ideal Husband" does not directly address the question of sexual morality, it does have some relevance to Wilde's own situation. Like Sir Robert, he was hiding what late Victorian society would have considered a guilty secret.

There are good contributions from Hugh Williams as Sir Robert, Diana Wynyard as Gertrude and Paulette Goddard as Mrs Cheveley, who here becomes an American who has kept her accept despite her English education. (We learn that she was s schoolmate of Gertrude Chiltern). Doubtless the film-makers wanted to create a role for a major American star. There is a particularly good performance from Michael Wilding as Goring, which is not an easy role to play. On the one hand the actor's performance must be light and elegant enough to convey Goring's facade of the cynically witty boulevardier. On the other, it must also be substantial enough to suggest the decent man of principle and devoted friend who lurks beneath that facade, and Wilding is able to bring off this difficult double. Wilding may be best remembered today as one of Liz Taylor's many husbands, but in the forties and fifties he was an established star of the British cinema and of Hollywood. He was also a versatile actor; another role in which he was excellent was that of the Pharaoh Akhenaton in "The Egyptian", a character about as different from Goring as one could imagine.

The film closely follows the plot of Wilde's play and keeps the original setting. (One difference is that the scene in the House of Commons is actually shown; in the play we merely hear about it at second hand). I think that this was the right decision as the details of Wilde's plots are often specific to late Victorian times and attempts to update them can fall flat. An example is the recent "A Good Woman", an adaptation of "Lady Windermere's Fan", which makes the main characters American rather than British and transfers the action to 1930s Italy. In my view this film does not really succeed, and an important reason for this is that the film-makers never seem to have taken into account the fact that the world had changed in the four decades between the 1890s and the 1930s.

If one looks at the wider themes of Wilde's plays rather than the details, however, they can be seen to touch on many topics of timeless relevance to modern times. This was true of the 1940s and remains true today; the theme of political corruption, for example, seems particularly relevant today in the wake of the MPs' expenses scandal. Even more important is what he has to say about love: - "It is not the perfect, but the imperfect, who have need of love. It is when we are wounded by our own hands, or by the hands of others, that love should come to cure us – else what use is love at all"? The combination of wit with a serious discussion of important topics is what makes Wilde's "drawing-room" plays so compelling, and this version of "An Ideal Husband" is an excellent adaptation of a great play. 8/10

"An Ideal Husband" from 1947 is not Oscar Wilde's most famous comedy, but it is funny nevertheless. This production is directed by Sir Alexander Korda with an English cast with the exception of Paulette Goddard. Goddard plays a "woman with a past," the overly-made up Lady Chevely, who attempts to blackmail Sir Robert Chiltern (Hugh Williams) so that he will encourage support for what is, in essence, a scam in which she has invested. Williams turns to a friend, Viscount Arthur Goring (Michael Wilding) for advice.

This is the type of material that can be hilarious or just charmingly witty, and Korda opted for the latter. As good as it is, the film is nearly upstaged by some of the most gorgeous costumes ever seen, designed by Cecil Beaton. They are truly eye-popping, as is the beautiful color process used in the film.

Everyone is good, including a young, pretty Glynis Johns as Chiltern's as yet unmarried sister, and Lady Diana Wynward as the very moral Lady Chiltern.

This film compares well with the 1999 version starring Rupert Everett, Cate Blanchett, and Julianne Moore. Moore perhaps exhibited a little more class than Goddard, but Goddard still does a good job. Well, you could certainly believe she was a "woman with a past" at any rate.

Very enjoyable.