I reaally like this film, I like the actors in it and to me Stephen Fry`s `Wilde` doesn`t touch it. Even though his acting was good, I just couldn`t get past Stephen`s hair in that one.![]()
Yes, Lionel was very convincing as the angry father.
The Morley film does go into some detail about what he was on trial for. The Fry film does everything it can to put him back in the closet, giving the impression that his sole motivation for his regular attendance at male brothels was a desire to read poetry to the employees![]()
I agree that Trials was much better IMHO although I did know very little about the trials before I saw it. Wilde merges his own two trials into one IIRC and spends a lot of time implying that the Wilde/Douglas relationship was all about poetry and art.
I'd like to see the Robert Morley film but haven't got round to mgetting a copy yet.
Are you a short back and sides kinda Girl, Shirl?![]()
Not just looked like him, Stephen Fry is much more like Oscar Wilde than anyone else who's ever played him. Playwright, author, wit, all round clever-clogs. Wilde was the role that Stephen was born to play.
The 1960 film focussed on the trial, as is appropriate given its title. The 1997 film gave more of a picture of his complete life
Steve
Last edited by Nick Dando; 31-10-11 at 06:00 PM.
However it doesn't necessarily make it the best film. I thought the Fry film was a bit of a whitewash (presumably to make it palatably to more conservative audiences in other coutries). I'd like to see a dramatisation of the Wilde story that, rather than showing him as some sort of martyr, really made it clear how appallingly he treated his wife and children. Would he be seen so sympathetically if he'd been serially unfaithful with teenage girls?
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I suppose it depends which you think is the most important, a person's personal life and habits or their work. There are others I can think of who produced an amazing body of work of great artistic merit but who were regularly unfaithful to their wives and even to their mistresses
Steve
But people don't make films about what an amazing writer Wilde was. They make films about the trials - and the Fry film does everything it can to suggest that all he got up to was a bit of poetry reading as some sort of outreach work among the poorWith the suggestion that his wife just didn't understand him
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Nickolas Grace was, as ever, good value as Oscar in Salome's Last Dance.
I would have liked to see Dennis Price have a go...