I have just seen the 1960 film The Trials Of Oscar Wilde, with that very good actor (and womanising hellraiser Peter Finch as the man himself, and in the light of that film, I should like to edit this review. This is what I originally wrote: Like John Wayne, Stephen Fry is always Stephen Fry in a film: he never manages to get the viewer - well, this viewer, at least - to suspend his disbelief. And that rather kills any film he's in stone dead. The Duke had the same problem for me: it was never anyone else but John Wayne acting in a film, and the sad conclusion could well be that neither gent can really act. As for Wilde, well another reviewer here has described it as a document, not a film, and that about sums it up. It is said to be based on Richard Ellman's biography of Wilde and what we get is just that, a more or less potted two hour lesson in the main events of Wilde's life. And perhaps being somehow contaminated by Fry's lack of acting ability, Michael Sheen, Jude Law, Jennifer Ehle, Maggie Smith, Zoe Wannamaker and the rest also come across as 'being in a costume drama', which more or less kills the film's other virtues in a trice. And that's a shame, because it is a rather handsome looking film into which was put a lot of thought. But given that it is, to put it very harshly, somewhat brain dead, all that effort has rather been wasted. Oh, well. It's not actually bad, but it's not very good, either.
That was it, to which I should like to add that for for a far, far, far superior and more intelligent portrayal of Oscar Wilde and his trials, go and see Peter Finch in The Trials Of Oscar Wilde. For one thing you realise quite how gratuitous and irrelevant the gay sex scenes are in Fry's version. The earlier film covers exactly the same ground and conveys exactly what Wilde was up to without any such scenes at all. That is, however, by the by. This version just isn't up to it. Finch's version was.
That was it, to which I should like to add that for for a far, far, far superior and more intelligent portrayal of Oscar Wilde and his trials, go and see Peter Finch in The Trials Of Oscar Wilde. For one thing you realise quite how gratuitous and irrelevant the gay sex scenes are in Fry's version. The earlier film covers exactly the same ground and conveys exactly what Wilde was up to without any such scenes at all. That is, however, by the by. This version just isn't up to it. Finch's version was.