The Importance of Being Earnest (Anthony Asquith, 1952)

Dorothy Tutin and Joan Greenwood in The Importance of Being Earnest

Ernest Worthing: Michael Redgrave
Algernon Moncrieff: Michael Denison
Lady Bracknell: Edith Evans
Gwendolen Fairfax: Joan Greenwood
Cecily Cardew: Dorothy Tutin
Miss Prism: Margaret Rutherford
Canon Chasuble: Miles Malleson
Merriman: Aubrey Mather

Director: Anthony Asquith
Screenplay: Anthony Asquith
Based on a play by Oscar Wilde
Cinematography: Desmond Dickinson
Art direction: Carmen Dillon
Film editing: John D. Guthridge
Costume design: Beatrice Dawson
Music: Benjamin Frankel

For its marvelous sendup of the drawing room drama, the intricate craftsmanship of its plot, and the unparalleled wit of its dialogue, The Importance of Being Earnest has been called a "perfect" play. But perfection in the theater doesn't readily translate to perfection on the screen, so some of the fluidity and buoyancy of Oscar Wilde's play is lost in Anthony Asquith's otherwise admirable film. Asquith's screenplay chops up and relocates parts of some of the play's acts, and it provides a theatrical frame for the action: people taking their seats in the box of a Victorian theater and the curtain rising as a woman raises her opera glasses to view the performance. Asquith immediately breaks from that frame to show Ernest in his bath, a scene that doesn't exist in the play and seems to be in the film only to demonstrate that the screenwriter has "opened it up" cinematically. But almost immediately we are back in the confines of Wilde's original, as Algernon arrives and the exposition begins. The frame is a nice little trick on Asquith's part, but it feels gratuitous. The play's the thing, and for the most part Asquith sticks to it. The chief glory of his film lies in his cast, most of whom had almost certainly performed their roles on stage, given the centrality of Wilde's play in the British repertoire. And although the men are perfectly fine in their roles, the women are what matter in the film: a quartet of perfectly cast, impeccably skilled performers. Lady Bracknell typically steals every production of The Importance of Being Earnest, and Edith Evans almost makes the role her own forever -- though the part has been played by equally formidable actresses like Judi Dench and Maggie Smith -- with her imperious delivery. No one has ever surpassed her in summoning up the full diapason while delivering the line "A handbag?" Nor is it possible to imagine a more perfect embodiment of Miss Prism than Margaret Rutherford, who makes it quite clear that the character was entirely capable of placing the novel in the pram and the baby in the valise. Gwendolen and Cecily are not so distinctly drawn in the script: Both are cunning ditzes, vehicles for epigrams, satires on girlishness. But Joan Greenwood and Dorothy Tutin give each a discrete characterization, Tutin with her sunny pretense at naïveté, Greenwood with her mastery of a voice that can go from purr to growl in nothing flat. If I give Greenwood the edge, it's only because of the way her slight lisp makes hearing her say the name Cecily such a delight.