Perennially Relevant You can wait ages for a cinema adaptation of Oscar Wilde's "An Ideal Husband", and then two come along at once. This was one of two versions which came out in 1999/2000. Such coincidences occasionally happen in the cinema; there was another one in 1973 when two studios were independently working on disaster movies about a fire in a skyscraper. When they discovered the coincidence they combined forces to produce the film now known as "The Towering Inferno". There were two biopics of Wilde himself in 1960 and two of Coco Chanel in 2009, and two versions of Ibsen's "A Doll's House" in 1973.
Wilde is often thought of as a primarily comic playwright, but of his seven completed plays only one, "The Importance of Being Earnest", is a pure comedy. Three other plays are sometimes bracketed with it as "drawing-room comedies", but all three are in many ways problem plays, combining plenty of witty dialogue with serious examination of social issues. In "Lady Windermere's Fan" and "A Woman of No Importance" these are questions of sexual morality, whereas "An Ideal Husband" revolves around political corruption, questions of honour, and the relationship between the sexes.
"An Ideal Husband" has been filmed four times. Oddly, the first version was made in Germany in 1935. Given the Nazi detestation of homosexuality, it seems strange that they should have chosen to film a work by a famously gay author. The next version from 1947 is an early example of the British "heritage cinema" style, being made in colour, which was still the exception rather than the rule in the British cinema of the forties, and featuring the lavish period sets and costumes which were later to become the hallmark of films set in the Victorian era.
Sir Robert Chiltern, a wealthy and successful politician, is approached at a party one evening by a mysterious woman named Laura Cheveley, who attempts to blackmail him to support a fraudulent scheme in which she has invested. She says that she knows, and can prove, that earlier in his career he was guilty of selling a state secret for money, and threatens him with exposure unless he makes a speech to the House of Commons recommending that the British Government support her scheme. The film then explores the complications which arise from this and Laura's other machinations.
Two key characters are Sir Robert's wife Gertrude and his closest friend Lord Arthur Goring. At first Arthur seems to one of Wilde's witty but foppish young men, a gilded dandy whose main talent is for uttering bons mots like "Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not", but in the end he proves to be a loyal and resourceful friend to Sir Robert. Gertrude Chiltern is high-minded and idealistic, but can be inflexible and unforgiving; she finds it difficult to make allowances for those, even her husband, whose moral principles are not as rigid as her own. The need to atone for one's past misdeeds, and the need to allow others to atone for theirs, is one of the key themes of the play. "No one should be entirely judged by their past." Although "An Ideal Husband" does not directly address the question of sexual morality, it does have some relevance to Wilde's own situation. Like Sir Robert, he was hiding what late Victorian society would have considered a guilty secret.
Wilde's story is a good one, but it needs some excellent acting if it is to work on the stage or in the cinema. Fortunately, this film, like its 1947 predecessor, can call on the services of some fine actors, not all of them British; Gertrude is payed by an Australian, Cate Blanchett, and Laura by an American, Julianne Moore. (The 1947 version also featured an American actress, in that case Paulette Goddard, as Mrs Cheveley). I particularly liked Rupert Everett as Arthur, which is not an easy role to play. On the one hand the actor's performance must be light and elegant enough to convey Goring's facade of the cynically witty boulevardier. On the other, it must also be substantial enough to suggest the decent man of principle and devoted friend who lurks beneath that facade, and Everett is able to bring off this difficult double, as was Michael Wilding in 1947. Mention should also go to Jeremy Northam, always good as solid, decent men of principle (like his Mr Knightley in "Emma") and to Blanchett.
The film follows the plot of Wilde's play, with one or two extra twists, and keeps the original period setting in 1895. (One difference is that the scene in the House of Commons is actually shown; in the play we merely hear about it at second hand). I think that this was the right decision as the details of Wilde's plots are often specific to late Victorian times and attempts to update them can fall flat. An example is "A Good Woman", an adaptation of "Lady Windermere's Fan", which makes the main characters American rather than British and transfers the action to 1930s Italy. In my view this film does not really succeed, and an important reason for this is that the film-makers never seem to have taken into account the fact that the world had changed in the four decades between the 1890s and the 1930s. (I understand that the 2000 version of "An Ideal Husband, which I have not seen, has a modern-day setting).
If one looks at the wider themes of Wilde's plays rather than the details, however, they can be seen to touch on many topics of timeless relevance to modern times. This was true of the 1890s, of the 1940s, of the 1990s and remains true today in 2024. The theme of political corruption, for example, seems perennially relevant today. Even more important is what Wilde has to say about love: - "It is not the perfect, but the imperfect, who have need of love. It is when we are wounded by our own hands, or by the hands of others, that love should come to cure us - else what use is love at all"? The combination of wit with a serious discussion of important topics is what makes Wilde's "drawing-room" plays so compelling, and this version of "An Ideal Husband" is an excellent adaptation of a great play. It can stand comparison with the 1947 version. 8/10.