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Importance Of Being Earnest (The)
R2 - United Kingdom - Network Review written by and copyright: Paul Lewis (15th June 2009). |
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The Film
 
The Importance of Being Earnest (Anthony Asquith, 1952) remains the cinema’s most fondly-remembered adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s 1895 play. The last play that Wilde wrote, The Importance of Being Earnest was written during a three week period and first produced on the stage in the year of Wilde’s trial following his dalliance with Lord Alfred Douglas. A pet project of actor Michael Denison, who plays Algernon Moncrieff, this 1952 film adaptation marked the first English language big screen adaptation of the play, although a television adaptation had been staged in 1938. The film was also the first colour film from the experienced British film director Anthony Asquith (The Browning Version, 1951; We Dive at Dawn, 1943). Director Asquith was also largely responsible for the screenplay, which is essentially Wilde’s original text with some minor amendments and omissions. As Tom Ryall notes in his book about Asquith in Manchester University Press’ British Film Makers series, Asquith’s adaptation of The Importance of Being Earnest foregrounds its heritage in the theatre from its opening moments onwards. The film opens with a shot of a couple taking seats in a theatre box before opening a theatrical programme. After the film’s credits, a proscenium arch theatre is shown in long shot; following a cut to a medium shot of the woman in the theatre box holding up a pair of theatre glasses, a point of view shot from the woman’s perspective shows us Jack Worthing (Michael Redgrave) bathing, under the supervision of his ‘gentleman’s gentlemen’. As Ryall notes in his book, this brief sequence of shots consistently reminds the audience that they are watching a film adaptation of a stage play: the sequence depicts a succession of images that allude to world of theatre, ‘the box, the programme, the proscenium arch, the curtain rising; yet the point of view shot of Redgrave [in the bath] signals cinema’ (Ryall, 2005: 136).  
The Importance of Being Earnest is essentially a farce about deception, although the play (and this film adaptation) satirises many of the ideas at the heart of English culture. In the film, Jack Worthing (Michael Redgrave) tells his friend Algernon Moncrieff (Michael Denison) of his practice of masquerading as his imaginary brother Ernest: acknowledging the Victorian dualism of ‘town’ and ‘country’ (‘When one is in town, one amuses oneself; when one is in the country, one amuses other people’, Worthing notes during the film’s opening minutes), Jack tells Algernon that ‘a high moral tone can hardly be said to conduce very much to either one’s health or one’s happiness. In order to get up to town, I have always pretended to have a younger brother whose name is Ernest, who lives in the Albany and who gets into the most dreadful scrapes’. Jack is in love with Gwendolen Fairfax (Joan Greenwood), the cousin of Algernon; Algernon is in love with Cecily Cardew (Dorothy Tutin), the ward of Jack. Jack’s attempts to woo Gwendolen are frustrated somewhat by Lady Bracknell (Dame Edith Evans), Gwendolen’s mother. Lady Bracknell disapproves of John’s relationship with Gwendolen, largely due to Jack’s past: as a baby, he was found in a handbag at a railway station, and Lady Bracknell feels that it is improper for Gwendolen ‘to marry into a cloakroom and form an alliance with a parcel’. Gwendolen’s desire for Jack is largely predicated on her belief that he is named Ernest. Inspired by Jack’s double life, Algernon presents himself to Cecily as Jack’s imaginary brother Ernest, and soon begins a relationship with the young woman. However, Algernon too finds that, like Gwendolen, Cecily is partly in love with the name Ernest; Cecily tells Algernon that ‘There is something in that name that seems to inspire absolute confidence’. Both Jack and Algernon make plans to change their names to Ernest, in order to please the women that they love.  
Wilde’s classic farce revolves around the concept of ‘Bunburying’, the creation of an imagined friend or relative as a means of living a double life. The title (which plays on the fact that the name ‘Ernest’ and the word ‘earnest’ are homophones) alludes to this theme of deception; the relationships between all of the characters are on some level marked by dishonesty. For this reason, as Stephen Bourne (2006) notes ‘[a]t every turn Wilde’s play, as directed by Asquith, ridicules heterosexual romantic fantasies while keeping the sugar coating that allows the bitter pill to be swallowed’ (Bourne, 2006: 39). For its satirical skewering of the attitudes associated with the culture of the English (‘I have never allowed my duties as a gentleman to interfere with my pleasures to the smallest degree’, Algernon notes at one point), The Importance of Being Earnest ‘is regarded as a masterpiece of comic theatre, with its vocabulary, characters, subversion of the theatrical convention of the 1880s and 1890s, and its coincidences, mistaken identities and skeletons in cupboards’ (ibid.). For some, the play’s focus on the theme of deception and doubling suggests a gay subtext. For example, quoting Jack Babuscio, Stephen Bourne suggests that although ‘[f]or years audiences have been conned into thinking that Wilde’s sparkling, witty production is a romantic, heterosexual comedy’, in fact it is ‘a play whose homoerotic undertones lie closer to the surface than in any other Wilde work, excepting The Picture of Dorian Gray’: ‘The Importance of Being Earnest is essentially the story of two men who engage in dandyish dating of females as a convenient cover-up for the pursuit of […] illicit and, it is strenuously suggested, homosexual pleasures (Babuscio, quoted in ibid.; emphasis in original). As evidence to support this reading of the play, Babuscio points to Wilde's reticence to discuss the play's themes: when asked on the ‘opening night if the critics were likely to understand the play’s real meaning, Wilde quickly replied, “I hope not!”’ (Babuscio, quoted in ibid.). This aspect of the play has been foregrounded in many stagings of The Importance of Being Earnest: for example, in Nicholas Hynter’s 1993 stage production, featuring Richard E. Grant and Alex Jennings as Algy and Jack (see Stokes, 1996: 166-7). Stephen Bourne suggests that this aspect of Wilde’s play is present in Asquith’s adaptation: ‘[i]n the last shot, Redgrave and Greenwood’ appear to begin to kiss but stop before their lips meet and, turning, adopt ‘an absurd pose’; as Bourne notes, this closing shot ‘is typical of the mischief the film makes’ (Bourne, op cit.: 39). 
The film is uncut and runs for 91:35 mins (PAL).
Video
The film is presented in its original screen ratio of 1.33:1. The colour image is well-represented on this DVD. Colours are vibrant, and the image is consistently sharp and detailed. The transfer is gorgeous, far better than the soft transfer found on the earlier UK release from Carlton.
Audio
Audio is presented via a two-channel monophonic track. This is clear and crisp; there are no subtitles.
Extras
Contextual material includes: - Four galleries: Main (3:50), including stills from the film; Portraits (2:30) of the performers; Premiere (0:31), a series of images from the film’s premiere; and Publicity (1:43), a gallery of publicity materials. - a featurette entitled ‘A Profile of The Importance of Being Earnest’ (24:06). Produced for Carlton Television in 1999, this featurette features reflections on the film’s production, including input from Stephen Fry (who played Oscar Wilde in Brian Gilbert's 1997 biopic Wilde), Dorothy Tutin and Dulcie Gray (Michael Denison’s widow). This DVD also contains a range of DVD-ROM materials, including: - an original small pressbook (4 pages). This foregrounds Asquith’s status as the auteur behind the film and claims that the play (and film adaptation) ‘brings the spotlight of ridicule to bear on the established order of things’. The decision to shoot in colour is justified by the assertion that black-and-white ‘could not do justice to the subject or create the right atmosphere and effect’. The pressbook highlights the fact that the film features the first use of Technicolor equipment ‘at Pinewood Studios since 1947’. In discussing the process of adaptation, the pressbook concedes that Wilde’s play ‘is not without controversial aspects—for only on controversy, argument and stimulated public interest can any artistic creation hope to succeed’. - an original pressbook (8 pages). This repeats all of the information from the small pressbook, but in larger font and with the inclusion of many more images. - a booklet of original press reviews (12 pages) entitled ‘Impressions of Importance’. This reproduces several smaller contemporaneous reviews of the film, alongside longer entries including C. A. Lejeune’s glowing review of the film from The Observer. Both Lejeune, The Daily Mirror’s Reg Whitley and the Evening News’ Jympson Harman praise in particular the performance of Dame Edith Evans, which Lejeune claims ‘triumphs over all […] I don’t recall a more exciting film performance than this for many a year’. Other reviews come from such publications as The Daily Worker, The Times, The Daily Mail and The Sunday Chronicle. - the original press release (6 pages). In its opening paragraph, this document highlights once again the fact that The Importance of Being Earnest was the first film to be shot in Technicolor at Pinewood Studios since 1947. It also highlights the film’s relationship (in terms of cast and crew) with the successful The Browning Version. A synopsis is provided, alongside short biographies of the principal cast, Anthony Asquith, producer Teddy Baird, director of photography Desmond Dickinson and art director Carmen Dillon. - the original Gala premiere programme (4 pages). The programme highlights the fact that for the film’s premiere ‘foyer and front of house have been decorated and re-designed to take us back to the plush and gilt and sparkling glass of the leisurely Victorians’. - an original flyer (2 pages). - an exhbibitor’s campaign book (6 pages).
Overall
Arguably the best cinema adaptation of Wilde’s play, Asquith’s film wittily satirises many aspects of Victorian society, from attitudes to marriage and morality to the notion of the ‘dandy’. The film presents a society which pays lip service to the notion of ‘being earnest’ and which is in fact riddled with hypocrisy and deception. This ‘bitter pill’ is made easy to swallow thanks to the characteristic wit of Wilde’s text. Featuring a host of strong performances, Asquith’s film has rightly acquired a classic status. This DVD release from Network contains a range of contextual material and an excellent transfer. References Bourne, Stephen, 2006: ‘Behind the masks: Anthony Asquith and Brian Desmond Hearst’. In: Griffiths, Robin (ed), 2006: British Queer Cinema. London: Routledge: 35-46 Ryall, Tom, 2005: British Film Makers: Anthony Asquith. Manchester University Press Stokes, John, 1996: Oscar Wilde: Myths, Miracles and Imitations. Cambridge University Press For more information, please visit the homepage of Network DVD.
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