"Oscar Wilde," a twin film released at the same time as another UK production about the same subject, "The Trials of Oscar Wilde" (1960), it predictably, for a film from 1960, beats around the bush on the topic of homosexuality. This despite it being the crux of the "gross indecency" conviction of Wilde and my TV laughably describing the picture as a "frank" film on the matter. I wasn't quite prepared, however, for such a whitewashing of Wilde's homosexuality to the point that they portray his plight as mostly a series of false accusations. The strains the filmmakers go to here in covering trials about "the love that dare not speak its name" while not explicitly stating what they're talking about and pretending that Wilde isn't said unsaid thing is quite tiresome. At least, every actor speaks their lines clearly and loudly as befitting a filmed play. I've read others criticizing Robert Morley as the eponymous figure, but he seems no worse and maybe even sometimes better than the rest of the cast. The slack-jawed kid playing Oscar's son is especially atrocious. It's not Morley's fault, either, that the script requires him to spit out an epigram every few seconds. Personally, having seen several movies about the man now and screen adaptations of his novel and plays, which tend to add even more witticisms from works of his not the subject of whatever particular transmutation, I'm getting accustomed to this plentiful pith.
Moreover, the film does suggest one especially clever word usage, that of "gay." It's employed twice here, as I recall. Wilde says it once while testifying in court in defense of his relationships with youths, which he also claims to be about being cheerful and happy. One may assume, then, that he means "gay" here in the old-fashioned sense as another word meaning the same thing as those other two. But, it remains a queer word choice for when one is defending themself against accusations of homosexuality. Maybe not in the actual Victorian age of Wilde, but certainly by 1960 in a film that otherwise won't go any further than to quote the Marquess of Queensberry (yes, the same guy who lent his name to modern rules of boxing) in the object of Wilde's hasty libel suit against him claiming Wilde to be "posing." Indeed, the film is decades after the word already seems to have partly acquired its modern meaning as evidenced by Cary Grant in "Bringing Up Baby" (1939). I wonder, then, whether it's in this context a sly way for the filmmakers to address homosexuality without condemnation from censors. Leading me to suspect as much is its prominent placement at the end of the picture, when Wilde, drunk on absinthe, requests the orchestra to "play something gay."
Moreover, the film does suggest one especially clever word usage, that of "gay." It's employed twice here, as I recall. Wilde says it once while testifying in court in defense of his relationships with youths, which he also claims to be about being cheerful and happy. One may assume, then, that he means "gay" here in the old-fashioned sense as another word meaning the same thing as those other two. But, it remains a queer word choice for when one is defending themself against accusations of homosexuality. Maybe not in the actual Victorian age of Wilde, but certainly by 1960 in a film that otherwise won't go any further than to quote the Marquess of Queensberry (yes, the same guy who lent his name to modern rules of boxing) in the object of Wilde's hasty libel suit against him claiming Wilde to be "posing." Indeed, the film is decades after the word already seems to have partly acquired its modern meaning as evidenced by Cary Grant in "Bringing Up Baby" (1939). I wonder, then, whether it's in this context a sly way for the filmmakers to address homosexuality without condemnation from censors. Leading me to suspect as much is its prominent placement at the end of the picture, when Wilde, drunk on absinthe, requests the orchestra to "play something gay."