When you saw Wilde's play, he (Sir Robert Chiltern, played by Jeremy Northam) would be an absolutely identifiable character. "In the 19th century, there was a lot of romantic drama, rather like romantic comedy now," he said. Rupert Everett, who plays Lord Arthur Goring, the Wilde personal in the play and film, said that Parker's successful balancing act was necessary given today's audiences. How much do you adapt? How much do you use of the play, and how much do you invent? How much comedy, and how much drama? The whole thing all the way through the writing and the shooting was nudging tone control." So you sort of have a foot in both camps, stylized and naturalistic. "As long as you could build a world in which these characters existed in a more naturalistic fashion, give them a bit firmer emotional base, then the language becomes a delight. And the language was interesting: I thought 'Is it the thing that is weighing us down or will this make it rise to the surface?' Though I was obviously hooked by the contemporary quality to it. "I went to see the play, and I didn't think it was a very good idea, actually," he said. Parker knew when he was asked by the producers of "An Ideal Husband" to consider making it as a film that he would have to adapt Wilde's stylized, epigrammatic British society comedy to make it palatable and relevant to modern audiences, especially American ones. The Peter Finch film was interesting in many ways." "He said that he merely put his talent into his work and his genius into his life, but they mix so much that you really get his life and personality through his work. "Stephen Fry is extraordinary in embodying so many of Wilde's own qualities, but I kept wanting to see more of his work when I saw that film. "I think you can get an honest film, but it's a question of whether you can get a complete one," the director said. Parker said none of the films does full justice to Wilde's genius. Earlier films are 1959's "Oscar Wilde" staring Robert Morley and 1960's "The Trials of Oscar Wilde" with Peter Finch in the title role. Most recent is 1996's "Wilde," directed by Brian Gilbert and starring remarkable British actor Stephen Fry. When he was released in 1897, he was divorced, bankrupt and physically broken. He was sentenced to two years hard labor in prison. Wilde did, and, given the truth of the assertion, lost. Furious that his son was openly engaged in a homosexual relationship with Wilde, Queensberry left a card with a porter at Wilde's club reading "To Oscar Wilde, posing Somdomite (sic)."īosie hated his father and urged Wilde to sue him for libel. He married, had children and then fell deeply in love with Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas, whose father was the Marquess of Queensberry, of boxing rules fame. Art for art's sake was the movement's credo. Oscar Fingall O'Flahertie Wills Wilde attended Trinity College and then Magdalen College, Oxford, where he became part of the Aestheticism movement, devoted to the idea that from beauty all other principles, especially moral ones, are derived, and that artists have no other obligation but to strive for beauty in their works. He was born in 1854 in Dublin to a mother who was a nationalist literary figure and an eye-surgeon father. What he went through in his life was unbelievable, and he managed to maintain his dignity, his wit and his integrity." "That's what's so remarkable about Oscar Wilde as a writer and as a human being. The important thing is to be tolerant and not to judge. "Basically, the movie is saying there is no ideal, there is no perfection," Moore said. Its shaded answers to complex questions make it not only entertaining but also enlightening. The film is a bouquet to the work of a man who said "I have put my genius into my life all I have put into my works is my talent." Those merely talented works include a novel, "The Picture of Dorian Gray" such celebrated plays as "Lady Windemere's Fan," "The Importance of Being Earnest" and "Salome" and volumes of poems, essays and witty epigrams.įull of paradox and seriousness shot through with Wildean wit, "An Ideal Husband" explores the very timely question of the importance of character in politicians and of honesty in personal relationships. Parker's adaptation of Wilde's play is a charming romantic comedy visually defined by a hothouse of colorful 19th century costumes and verbally defined by Wilde flowers of wit. AFTER a broken life ended in infamy in 1900 at the age of 46, could Wilde win an Oscar in 1999?Ĭould be, now that 19th century playwright and bon vivant Oscar Wilde has been taken up and shaken up a bit in "An Ideal Husband." This Oliver Parker film stars Rupert Everett as the Wilde card as well as fellow British talents Cate Blanchett, Minnie Driver, Jeremy Northam and American actress Julianne Moore.
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