Oscar Wilde
Directed by Gregory Ratoff
Written by Jo Eisenger based on works by Frank Harris and a play by Leslie Stokes and Sewell Stokes
1960/UK
Vantage Films
First viewing/YouTube
Yet each man kills the thing he loves/ By each let this be heard/ Some do it with a bitter look/ Some with a flattering word/ The coward does it with a kiss/ The brave man with a sword” ― Oscar Wilde, “The Ballad Of Reading Gaol”
This film makes a very sad story remarkably dull. Fortunately, we get a chance to watch Robert Morley and Ralph Richardson act – always a good thing.
This is the true story of the downfall of the late Victorian poet, playwright and bon vivant (Morley). It begins with the meeting of the 40-something Wilde and the 20-something Oxford student Lord Alfred Douglas who pursued him. The relationship developed into a love affair and infuriated Douglas’s father, the Marquis of Queensbury. In an effort to end it, the father writes Wilde a note accusing him of “posing as a sodomite”.
Douglas, who here is basically portrayed as the villain of the piece, has long had a very strained relationship with his father. He encourages Wilde to sue the Marquis for libel. The Marquis’s defense is that the accusation was true. Through the able and withering defense of the Marquis’s attorney (Richardson), it becomes clear that the Marquis has the evidence to amply prove Wilde’s many liaisons with much younger men. At Douglas’s urging, Wilde pursues his case for far too long. By the time he throws in the towel, Wilde’s arrest for homosexuality, a crime at the time, is inevitable.
This should not be confused with the same year’s The Trials of Oscar Wilde starring Peter Finch, which I have not yet seen. This one lacks any real depth to the characterizations and, for most of its running time, appears to be a blow-by-blow enactment of the trial transcript. I could happily watch Richardson enact the telephone directory so I was not entirely displeased.
No clip or trailer so some music from the film
