The Importance of Being Earnest

The Importance of Being Earnest is a delightful elaboration of a pun by Oscar Wilde. Adapted for the screen by John Davis, and directed by Anthony Asquith, the play loses nothing in the transition. In fact, the camera might have focused directly on the stage production, for it avoids any distant, or off-angle shots, and yet is never static.

With all its intricacy, the plot is a standard period vehicle for Oscar Wilde's epigrammatic dialogue and the abilities of the actors. One absurd climax follows another in the fantastic style of the nineteenth century. Fortunately, however, the lines have been spared any tempering, and are as fresh today as they were sixty years ago.

Edith Evans, who has played Lady Bracknell on the stage, is magnificently victorian. Gaudily-gowned and rouged, Dame Evans is an awe-inspiring matriarch who distrusts everything but the "solid quality" of money. Screeching and bellowing, she commands both the characters and the film with the delicacy of a moose.

As Jack Worthing, Michael Redgrave alternates between dignity and degeneration, as he commutes between his country home and city apartment. Richard Wattis, his face, in an interminable, self-satisfied pucker, also has a dual identity, keeping the two separate with a bit more verve than Redgrave. Joan Greenwood and Dorothy Tutin are the befuddled fiances of the two slightly dishonest gentlemen. Both are ridiculously prim and appropriately fatuous.

Successfully combining new talent with an old play, the screen version of The Importance of Being Earnest is as amusing as it is dated. The result is a mocking comedy at the expense of an extinct species.

Accompanying the main feature is Royal Destiny, a reverent documentary of Queen Elizabeth II. It follows the life of the Queen from her "Lillibet" stage to the responsibilities of Queenship. For an American it is always interesting and sometimes inspiring.