Month: October 2018

Celebrating Wilde, and Howe

I don’t suppose many people in America have given a talk about Oscar Wilde in a place where Oscar Wilde also gave a talk.

It is a feat more easily achieved in the UK where old theaters survive. But in America, so many of the opera houses and music halls where Wilde lectured have now been lost, many destroyed by fire, long ago.

So the possibility of emulating Oscar seemed elusive. Until, that is, I reached Newport, Rhode Island, while documenting Wilde’s lecture tour. It was then I realized that not only was such a repeat performance possible, it was in a place that was eminently worth visiting.

Much remains of the Newport that Oscar knew, and of the maritime resort built by the Vanderbilts, Astors, and Wideners, when a marble mansion out of town was the exclusive status symbol.

And Newport not only offered the chance to visit pleasant Wildean locations, there also happened to be a Wilde exhibition at the Preservation Society, and a chance to join the Victorian Society in America’s annual Summer School.

So I decided upon a six-day retreat to Newport —just as Oscar had done on his Summer break in 1882.

Continue reading Celebrating Wilde, and Howe

Rupert on Popcorn

‘The Happy Prince’ star Rupert Everett on channeling Oscar Wilde to reignite his career.

For my review of the film, see here:
The Happy Prince—(2018)

Back To The Wall

In a recent post I noted how Oscar Wilde and Sarah Bernhardt had stood in precisely the same spot when having their photographs taken by Napoleon Sarony.

It was just a curiosity; but now Lillie Langtry makes it a mystery.

Continue reading Back To The Wall

The 16th Green

oscar

Today is the birthday of a famous Irishman and, lest I insult your knowledge, I should quickly add that I do not refer to this young chap above—Wildeans need no reminding that Oscar celebrates his birthday today, October 16th.

Consider instead a curiosity about this date in Irish lore.

Continue reading The 16th Green

The Happy Prince—(2018)

Rupert Everett as Oscar Wilde. Photo by Wilhelm Moser, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

‘The Happy Prince’ Opens in America

You could be forgiven for thinking that a blog about Oscar Wilde might not provide the most objective forum for a film about Oscar Wilde—perhaps being too close to its subject to see it as one would ordinarily.

However, the opposite turns out to be true about The Happy Prince because it is no ordinary film. It warrants a specialist view being itself the work of an Oscar Wilde specialist.

Rupert Everett has played Wilde’s fictional characters both on stage and in film; he has already appeared as the real Oscar Wilde in David Hare’s The Judas Kiss on both sides of the Atlantic; and, after spending an age poring over Wilde’s works in homage to his patron saint, Everett has also spent the last ten years of his life taking on a tide of personal and industry challenges in order to craft this film.

It is an effort that lays bare a more compelling reason why the film should not be regarded as just another movie. And it is a reason Everett shares with the artist Basil Hallward (in Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray) who accepted that his portrait of Dorian was not just another painting. He confessed: “I have put too much of myself into it.”

Wilde explained this characteristically philosophical view of art when he said:

“Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.”

So it is with Everett, whose devotion during a decade of writing, directing, and now acting in a lifetime passion, might also be regarded as his art. Certainly, The Happy Prince is a highly personalized vision: a dark introspection with the protagonist in almost every scene.

So the inference is that we should not approach the film routinely from the outside in, but rather the other way around. Taken on those terms, there is much to admire, not only for the specialist but for the generalist viewer.

Let us look at it, as Everett did, through that lens.

Continue reading The Happy Prince—(2018)

The Green Hour

1920px-Privat-Livemont_-_Absinthe_Robette,_1896.jpg

It was time for the press screening of The Happy Prince, Rupert Everett’s new bio-pic of Oscar Wilde’s post-parting prison depression, to be shown at the headquarters of Sony Pictures in New York ahead of its general release in the U.S. later this month.

I was becoming excited, and as I would be coming a long way, I decided to prepare in a manner becoming the movie.

Continue reading The Green Hour