Around 10 years ago, during a lull in his career, he decided to make it the subject of his first screenplay. That’s the period of Wilde’s life that most fascinated Everett. After his release, he spent the last years of his life as a penniless exile in Paris. He was, Everett observes, “one of the prototypes of the modern celebrity.”īut, Wilde’s flamboyant mannerisms and his barely concealed homosexuality kept him in a constant swirl of scandal that finally erupted in a trial for “gross indecency.” Wilde was found guilty and served two years in prison. His plays, essays and stories made him an international literary sensation and his witty quips were published in newspapers and periodicals around the globe. As the opening title of “The Happy Prince” relates, in 1895, Oscar Wilde was the most famous man in London. It was like riding a bike - something I could just do effortlessly.”Įverett also views Wilde as the great martyr, or even the patron saint, of the modern gay rights movement. Something between me and the text just sparked. “When you have a good relationship with a writer it’s really quite magical. “Discovering Wilde as a playwright was a great moment for me as an actor,” Everett says during a Washington Blade interview. The actor treasures his relationship with Wilde. He’s starred in stage productions of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and “The Importance of Being Earnest” and in movie adaptations of “Earnest” and “An Ideal Husband.” He played Oscar Wilde in the 2012 revival of David Hare’s play “The Judas Kiss,” a performance for which he was nominated for an Olivier award.Įverett, who is fluent in French, even starred in a production of “Earnest” at the Theatre National de Chaillot in Paris. Wilde is a great subject for a film, and there’s quite a few more modern entries to consider, but The Trials of Oscar Wilde is still worth streaming to see Finch in full flow, bringing a character to life in a way that reminds you how life knocked the stuffing out of Oscar Wilde.Since then, the life and works of Oscar Wilde have been an artistic and personal touchstone for Everett. Bond duo Albert R Broccoli and production designer Ken Adam do a great job of creating wide-active frames for old-world London, and the whole production is sharp as a tack. If the lengthy running time is a little too much, it’s hard to know what to cut Finch dispensing Wildean words is a pure pleasure, and seeing him grandstand in the courtroom opposite James Mason is something of a joy in terms of old-school performances as Sir Edward Carson, Mason gives a great rendition of a sharp mind who senses blood in the water. That evasive quality, missing from Stephen Fry’s Wilde or Rupert Everett’s The Happy Prince, both excellent films, is centre stage here, and adds greatly to the effect much as the lack of overt homosexuality pervades Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, it makes sense in Hughes’s film that because Wilde’s sexuality is not defined, it makes him vulnerable, a decidedly modern way of seeing it given that Wilde is the clear and unmistakable hero here. John Fraser is a pretty fine Alfred Douglas, and the scandal around their relationship is all the more dramatic because the ‘love that dare not speak it’s name’ is never defined by any action this is 1961 after all. Also elevating the action is the casting Peter Finch is one of the acting greats, and although the more modern Network saw him pull out all the stops to ground-breaking effect, he absolutely submerges himself in Wilde, bringing the bon mots into play with great skill, and always making Wilde more than just a quote machine. Still, Ken Hughes’s 1961 film is pretty much a success in terms of bring the story of Oscar Wilde to the big screen in the most direct fashion, demonstrating ably how a failed libel on Wilde’s part led him into a trap laid by the authorities.Īlthoigh dated in some ways, The Trials of Oscar Wilde is more than watchable fare today, largely because it carries forward a certain theatrical strength derived from source play The Stringed Lute by John Furnell. …is a neat title, because we’re not just talking about one trial here, but several, and these court-room appearances are indeed a trial to Oscar Wilde himself, so exhausting that the great man is a somewhat broken figure by the end.
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