AN IDEAL HUSBAND (1947)

The Oscar Wilde play most admired by G.B. Shaw gets a near ideal stage-to-screen transfer in this superbly cast Alexander Korda production. As a director, Korda was . . . a great producer. But here, it all comes together, starting with Lajos Biró’s neatly trimmed, well-spotted script. Every location a revelation. Korda, famously impatient on set (his producer was always looking over his shoulder!) revels in a cast unfazed by his clipped shooting habits. And he’s well partnered by Georges Périnal’s beautifully balanced TechniColor compositions, Vincent Korda’s decor and Cecil Beaton’s jaw-dropping costumes. As Wilde adaptations go, it’s second only to Ernst Lubitsch’s LADY WINDERMERE’S FAN/’25.* On stage in London (as was THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST) just as Wilde was being denounced as a ‘sodomite,’ the blackmail letters that figure in HUSBAND’s plot seem unusually personal for a Wilde play, striking tragic notes between the cascades of witty lines and peer-to-peer socializing. The story arrives like courses at a formal dinner; wraps off for full display before setting up relationships between Paulette Goddard’s wicked widowed adventuress and the posh London gentry she doesn’t quite belong to. Thanks to a past financial indiscretion, and a letter to prove it, Goddard holds the upper hand against Cabinet Member Hugh Williams who’s bound to be ruined if gadfly bachelor Michael Wilding (in his best role) can’t find a way to get around this dangerous lady. Meanwhile, a swirl of social & marital issues are discussed, debated, dissected and generally bandied about to general delight, with Wilde finding just the right dramatic twists to make everything come out right in the end. Something he wasn’t able to do in real life.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Lubitsch had the paradoxical advantage of making a silent film of Wilde’s aphoristic play.

READ ALL ABOUT IT: The society portrayed here can be seen in endless detail in Anthony Trollope’s PALLISER series. Especially its penultimate novel, THE PRIME MINISTER.