The attempted seduction scene was cut from the final version. Hurst's book: Heaven Can Help - the Autobiography of a Medium describes the day's filming at Walton-on-Thames Studio. They were both released in the last week of May.Īuthor and former film extra, Brian Edward Hurst, gives a detailed description of a scene he witnessed during filming where Morley (as Wilde) attempted to pick up a newspaper boy on a foggy London street. This was one of two films about Wilde released in 1960, the other being The Trials of Oscar Wilde. The film starred Robert Morley as Oscar Wilde, Ralph Richardson as Sir Edward Carson, Phyllis Calvert as Constance Wilde, John Neville as Lord Alfred Douglas, Dennis Price as Robbie Ross, Alexander Knox as Sir Edward Clarke and Edward Chapman as the Marquess of Queensberry. Original music score was by Kenneth Jones. 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.The film was directed by Gregory Ratoff and produced by William Kirby, from a screenplay by Jo Eisinger, based on the play Oscar Wilde by Leslie Stokes and Sewell Stokes. 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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