It was released a week after Oscar Wilde. The film was released at midnight on Saturday, at Studio One in London before its general release on. According to production designer Ken Adam, producer Irving Allen set up four editing rooms for the production, working in parallel during principal photography the setup permitted the film on the screen in the West End seven weeks after they had started filming. It was one of two films about Wilde released in 1960, the other being 20th Century Fox' Oscar Wilde starring Robert Morley. It's exciting to do something everybody says you can't." "Mind you the fact it's such a challenge is one reason I'm so keen. In February 1960, it was announced Peter Finch would play the role for a fee of £25,000. I should be very glad to act as advisor although I cannot say I would approve until I have seen the script. Vyvyan Holland (Wilde's son) said "the film company has not approached me. As for Wilde, the film will show him deserving pity, a genius living in a superficial fantasy world." The Marquis will be shown as the villain and I don't know how his family will like that. We shall approach the Queensberry family. "We are going to have some stiff legal problems. "I know American actors who would run a mile rather than play a part like this, but the film will be a flop unless Wilde is played by someone of stature," said Hughes. In November 1959, Ken Hughes said he hoped for Laurence Olivier or Alec Guinness to play the title role. Laurence Naismith as the Prince of Wales.Lionel Jeffries as Marquis of Queensbury.It stars Peter Finch as Wilde, Lionel Jeffries as Queensberry, and John Fraser as Bosie ( Lord Alfred Douglas) with James Mason, Nigel Patrick, Yvonne Mitchell, Maxine Audley, Paul Rogers and James Booth. The film was made by Warwick Films and released by Eros Films. The screenplay was by Ken Hughes and Montgomery Hyde, based on an unperformed play The Stringed Lute by John Furnell (the pseudonym of Phyllis Macqueen). It was written by Allen and Ken Hughes, directed by Hughes, and co-produced by Irving Allen, Albert R. Sir Ralph Richardson plays the prosecutor at the libel trial, and it is deeply sad and moving to see him chisel away at Wilde until there is nothing left of the man.The Trials of Oscar Wilde, also known as The Man with the Green Carnation and The Green Carnation, is a 1960 British drama film based on the libel and subsequent criminal cases involving Oscar Wilde and the Marquess of Queensberry. He makes the most of this opportunity, really chewing up the role in a delightful way. I can’t think of another film where he was the lead. (Oddly, another film about Wilde, a Technicolor production with a much larger budget, was released in the same month! I haven’t seen it.) I’ve always enjoyed Robert Morley, but always in supporting roles. This is all portrayed superbly in this black and white film. He went to France and died soon after, aged forty-four. At the last one he wrote his last important work, “The Balled of Reading Gaol.” He was released after the full two years, a broken man. He was bounced around between several prisons. The judge: “This is the worst case I have ever tried.” Two years was “totally inadequate for a case such as this.” Wilde was shipped off for hard labor, which soon destroyed his health. Poor Bosie urged Wilde to sue for libel (or at least that’s how it is portrayed in the movie), a disastrous mistake, because he was eviscerated in court, lost the case, and had to pay #9’s legal expenses, which left him bankrupt.Įven worse, the verdict left him open to a charge of public indecency, which was brought, and of which he was found guilty. #9 couldn’t stand the scandal of his son and Wilde cavorting around (foolishly) in public, and accused Wilde of being a sodomite. He got involved with a childish and dissolute young fop of the nobility, Lord Alfred Douglas (known as Bosie), the son of the son of a bitch John Douglas, the 9th Marquess of Queensberry. I’ve seen three or four films of it, and it always delights me.īut homosexuality was a crime in England. He wrote five plays, including one of the funniest comedies ever, The Importance of Being Earnest. He wrote short fiction, the best known being The Picture of Dorian Gray. He was the greatest wit of the times, endlessly quotable today. He was homosexual (a word never actually uttered in this film, though we hear of “The love that dare not speak its name”) though able to function as a straight man, fathering two sons. The story of Oscar Wilde is one of the great tragedies of the Victorian age.
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