Bunbury

I've mentioned a lot how I've got a bunch a movies on my DVR that need watching before they can expire. With that in mind, coming up next is the 1952 adaption of Oscar Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest. Having finally watched it, I can now do a review on it.

The movie opens up in London, at the apartment of one Ernest Worthing (Michael Redgrave). He's visited by an Algernon Moncrieff (Michael Denison), who claims among other things to have Ernest's cigarette case. This, however, is a ruse, as the cigarette case is one with a dedication from a Cecily that Ernest claims not to know anything about. And it's about to get a whole lot more complicated. Ernest theoretically does know Cecily, except that Ernest isn't Ernest. Ernest is really Jack Worthing, who lives at an estate out in the country where a much younger Cecily is his ward. Ernest is a fake identity, a made-up poor brother used by Jack as a ruse to be able to get away from his country home and go down to London.

And, to be fair, he's not the only faker out there. Algernon has created a fake identity, too, that of Bunbury, a friend who lives out in the country and is an excuse for Algernon to get away from London to go to the country. And once Algernon learns about Cecily, he'd like to go see her and put the moves on her. And Alergnon has a young female relative of marriageable age himself: his cousin Gwendolen (Joan Greenwood), still living with her mother, Jack's aunt Augusta, Lady Bracknell (Edith Evans).

Worthing and Algernon meet the two women, and Algernon comes up with a way to leave Jack and Gwendolen alone. Except that Gwendolen thinks this is Ernest Worthing, not Jack, a deception Algernon is perfectly willing to keep up. So when Aunt Augusta starts questioning Worthing, this being an era when the parents had to approve of marriages, Jack has to make up a pedigree about having been abandond as a child.

And then to make things more complicated, Algernon figures out where the Worthing country house is, and shows up unnanounced. Cecily and her governess, Miss Prism (Margaret Rutherford), immediately presume that this is the Ernest that Jack keeps talking about, something that displeases Jack to no end when he shows up. Algernon-as-Ernest proposes to Cecily. But then in a move that ups the complexity another level, Gwendolen also shows up, claiming that she too is engaged to Ernest, even though we all know there is no Ernest.

The Importance of Being Earnest is a movie that really demands a lot of attention while watching, as it's mostly in the dialog and there's a lot going on. It is, however, very well acted, and sure to be a delight for anyone who's a fan of the works of Oscar Wilde. I have to say that I haven't seen or read that much of Wilde's work, although obviously I think I did a review on the 1940s MGM adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Grey ages ago.