The Importance of Being Earnest

Jack uses the name Ernest in town and Algernon invents a sick friend in the country; both have built a second identity to escape their real lives. Things tangle when two women each announce they will only marry a man called Ernest. Anthony Asquith filmed Oscar Wilde's play with almost nothing changed, opening on a rising curtain and placing the viewer as if seated in a theatre. That fidelity is both the film's limit and its strength, because Wilde's sentences stand exactly as written. Edith Evans's Lady Bracknell, and the single word she uses to ask about the handbag, is among the most imitated moments in English stage history. Michael Redgrave and Michael Denison take the other parts. Who it is for: viewers who love Wilde and comedy of language. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a cinematic adaptation, since the film deliberately stays theatre.