Summer re-views: married folk

Two contrasting studies of tempestuous marriages and infidelity. The very serious THE PUMPKIN EATER from 1964 - not seen that since then; and the 1972 Trashfest that is ZEE & CO, (or X, Y, & ZEE) - ditto.

Upper middle-class life in the black and white early sixties is nicely dissected in Jack Clayton's THE PUMPKIN EATER, from a novel by Penelope Mortimer, scripted by Harold Pinter (so we are in THE SERVANT and ACCIDENT territory). 
Anne Bancroft, after her Oscar win (for THE MIRACLE WORKER, and before she essayed Mrs Robinson in THE GRADUATE), has one of her key roles as the very intense mother of eight children, as she wonders if her current husband, writer Peter Finch, is being unfaithful. He is of course, and with the annoying Philpot (a noteworthy early small role by Maggie Smith). He has also been having an affair with the wife of jealous friend James Mason, who plots his revenge. Jo (Bancroft) has a harrowing breakdown in Harrods store, and is later menaced at the hairdressers by a woman (Yootha Joyce) jealous of Jo's lavish lifestyle and good fortune. 

Her father is Cedric Hardwicke (his final role) and the cast also includes Alan Webb, Richard Johnson as Jo's previous husband,  Eric Porter and more familiar faces.

It is a fascinating drama, often teetering on the brink of pretentiousness and unintentional hilarity, but the cast is the thing here. (A similar movie is the same era's PSYCHE '59, by Alexander Singer, another look at posh London life, here the wife is Patricia Neal, who is blind until she realises what is going on between her husband Curt Jurgens and sexpot Samantha Eggar). 
ZEE & CO is a garish cartoon by comparison ...

Zee and Robert Blakeley are members of swinging London's upper crust whose unique love-hate marriage heads towards destruction when Robert falls in love with a beautiful young widow named Stella, and Zee goes through a series of scheming adventures to break Robert and Stella up.

Thats the plot in a nutshell, but it can hardly do justice to the Trash classic that is ZEE & CO, (or X, Y, AND ZEE) - an unlikely title for action director Brian G Hutton (but he had just directed Burton in WHERE EAGLES DARE) - this time, he puts a wild Elizabeth Tayor and dull Michael Caine through their paces, and a wan Susannah York, plus Margaret Leighton as a kind of aged hippie, and John Standing as the catty gay best friend, and young Michael Cashman (ex-EASTENDERS gay Colin) as the "poncy little fag" shop assistant.

The farrago was scripted by Edna O'Brien - hope she got paid a lot - and the whole thing gets wilder and wilder and funnier and funnier as Liz scheeches and brays as she plots to seduce Susannah herself, to get her away from husband Caine ..... Taylor seems to have a ball letting rip as the over-dressed vulgarian wife of stuffy architect Caine, but really her movie goddess days were coming to an end here in 1972; without a Zeffirelli, Losey or Mike Nichols to direct her she seems to have been encouraged to go way over the top here. This is a Trash Classic up there with the best of the worst - one to relish with THE LOVE MACHINE or THE OSCAR or even HARLOW .... 

Far from the madding crowd, again

Its back: FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD, John Schlesinger's ravishing 1967 film from the Thomas Hardy classic - despite liking all four leads: Julie Christie, Alan Bates, Peter Finch and dashing (very) Terence Stamp I have not seen this for decades, though have the dvd filed away, its now on re-release and is one to see on a giant screen, before the new version arrives shortly. So - Julie Christie or Carey Mulligan?  hmmmmmm. 

Like Zeffirelli's ROMEO & JULIET and Tony Richardson's THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE, and OLIVER! and THE LION IN WINTER, all 1968, its a great 1960s period film that remains fascinatingly of its era with great casts and production values, scripted by Frederic Raphael, and of course lensed by Nicolas Roeg ...

The new version, below, should be interesting too with Matthias Schoenaerts,  Martin Sheen and Tom Sturridge. 

Sexplosion !

"Sexplosion: From Andy Warhol to A Clockwork Orange - how a generation of pop rebels broke all the taboos" - this fascinating tome by Robert Hofler is an easy read, particularly for those of us who lived through those heady years. Let's see: "Rich, funny, and comprehensive SEXPLOSION takes you inside the tumultous, energizing years of 1968 to 1973, when artists, film-makers, and writers defied authority and challenged every taboo to create a sexual revolution that reverbates to this day. This is a superb evocation of an era" Patricia Bosworth says. or "Hofler pays tribute to the trailblazing artists who paved the way for the freedom on screen that we take for granted today", according to Jeffrey Schwarz.

It is a different world now looking back to those late 60s when censorship was still in full force - how much society can change over 40 years! Gay liberation and Women's Lib were still in their infancy - equality seemed a long way off then; unlike now, the newspapers were virulently anti-gay - in England the tabloids hounded closeted gay celebrities like Kenny Everett and Russell Harty to their deathbeds, and then the Aids crisis began .... Back in the '60s in America homosexuals were routinely called 'fags' or 'faggots' (it was 'poofs' here in England) even by the likes of liberals like Billy Wilder or John Huston (and in films like VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, THE LOVE MACHINE) - lots of straight men hated women whom they saw as castrating, dominating tyrants. 
Philip Roth certainly felt so - he refused to complete his manuscript for PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT as his hated ex-wife was getting half of what he earned, after tricking him into marriage with a fake pregnancy, as she had bought the urine sample from a pregnant woman, so he was not going to hand her another fortune - then, conveniently for him, not so for her, she was killed in a car crash, so heigh ho, and off to the printers !!! and that very funny book became one of the defining texts of the era, along with John Updike's COUPLES and Gore Vidal's MYRA BRECKINRIDGE, which we loved with a passion. Even the trash-but-fun movie did not dent our affection for it. How we howled at Mae West's line as she arrived at her office crowded with studs: "one of those guys will have to go..!"and poor Rusty gets it in the end, we had seen nothing like it !

Hofler goes into the genesis of all these, and in the theatre the problems with getting Mart Crowley's BOYS IN THE BAND, Tynan's OH! CALCUTTA! and Rado & Ragni's HAIR on stage with their nudity and depiction of gay life and those new freedoms. It seems critic Kenneth Tynan was more an unmitigated shit than one had realised. We knew about his S&M fetishes and caning women, but he was also rabidly anti-fag, and wanted nothing gay in his revue, and even wanted to hire only heterosexual actors! 

Also in the cinema, John Schlesinger was pushing boundaries with MIDNIGHT COWBOY, which featured some of the Warhol crowd, like Viva, also busy in Warhol products like LONESOME COWBOYS. Warhol's own films, as created by Paul Morrisey - FLESH, HEAT, TRASH - also raked in the money, though they would not pay for Holly Woodlawn to get bail from prison to attend her film opening!  Ken Russell meanwhile was getting the British film censor John Trevelyan (who was a regular on tv and in discussions on censorship I attended at the BFI), to pass his WOMEN IN LOVE (Olly and Alan had their own problems with that nude wrestling scene...) and the even more notorious THE DEVILS, while Visconti ran into problems with Warner Bros over his Nazi orgy in THE DAMNED and DEATH IN VENICE .....  which to the Warner Bros executives was about a middle-aged man chasing but never quite getting his hands on a knowing thirteen year old boy who seems to be leading him on. No wonder they wanted Tadzio changed to a girl called Tadzia !

Hofler though does not mention Fellini's SATYRICON or Antonioni's ZABRISKIE POINT, two other hits of the counterculture era, as we zoon on to BOB & CAROL & TED & ALICE (which earned Natalie Wood more than any other film she made, as she had a percentage deal) and CARNAL KNOWLEDGE, DEEP THROAT and A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (right). Amusing story about that - arch-manipulator Kubrick stayed at home in England but persuased Malcolm McDowell and Anthony Burgess, the book's author, to go to America and handle the interviews for ORANGE. Then Burgess realised he was not making anything from the film's success as he had earlier sold the rights for a few hundred dollars ....

Schlesinger ran into more trouble with his next one, SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY, but was now an Oscar-winning director, so got his way, having to replace his initial choices Ian Bannen and Hiram Keller which was not working out, with the more laid back Peter Finch and Murray Head. Princess Margaret though hated the film with its depiction of "men in bed kissing" - surely she knew enough gays! The kinky sex and violence of PERFORMANCE (left) also frazzled Warner Brothers who did not know what to do with it. STRAW DOGS with its brutal rape was also causing lots of problems. Then there was the notorious making of LAST TANGO IN PARIS ....

A fascinating era in all, as the new freedoms slowly became commonplace- as covered by "Films & Filming" and other magazines.  Another discussion I attended in 1970, when 24, at the BFI was on the topic of 'Actors & Nudity' - a hot topic then with more and more actresses and actors too, having to get their kit off. 
I remember Billie Whitelaw being vocal at this, and Zeffirelli's naked Romeo, Leonard Whiting, in a crushed velvet blue suit. He was standing next to me afterwards at the gents urinal  ... not a suitable moment to chat though.
Censorship still raged in Ireland then, a look at WOMEN IN LOVE at the local cinema I grew up in, in 1970 or so reduced us to helpless laughter - the wrestling scene had been reduced to a few shots of them panting on the carpet, making it even more suggestive. They were running MIDNIGHT COWBOY the following week - I wondered how much of that was left ...
How times change: Finland is now issuing quite explicit Tom of Finland stamps! 

A '70s classic: Sunday Bloody Sunday

In 1971 two years after the Oscar-winning MIDNIGHT COWBOY, John Schlesinger directed this fascinating character-driven study about love and unhappiness among London’s leisured middle-classes in their Hampstead or Islington enclaves. As scripted by Penelope Gilliatt, SUNDAY BLOOD SUNDAY shows an intriguing array of relationships, involving fifty-ish Jewish doctor Daniel Hirsch (Peter Finch), thirty-something divorcee Alex Greville (Glenda Jackson), dissatisfied with her life, and the flightly bisexual artist Bob Elkin (Murray Head) still in his 20s, whom they both knowingly share, like they share that answering service. Both Daniel and Alex crave more of Bob’s time and attention and they are both such rounded characters one initially wonders what they see in the shallow younger person. As he says to them “I know you feel you are not getting enough of me, but you’re getting all there is”. 

The older lovers contemplate their needs and desires over a long weekend, including that Sunday of the title, pondering whether – at their time of life – the companionship on offer is preferable to solitude, as Alex ruefelly tells herself “There are times when nothing has to be better than anything”.  Daniel too has to content himself with the meagre scraps of comfort that Bob casually throws his way. Surely he deserves more? 

We see Glenda busy with her career, and advising that executive out of work who has had a facelift for a job interview he feels he is too old for (Tony Britton – who provides her with some comfort, as he does not want to return to his wife until his face is back to normal) and visiting her parents Peggy Ashcroft and Maurice Denham, each in their own little worlds. Daniel, meanwhile, attends a Jewish bar mitzvah with family, and joins well-meaning liberal friends (Vivian Pickles, perfect again here as she was as Harold’s mother in HAROLD AND MAUDE, also 1971 – that’s another one to revisit again soon too). The doctor also has a brief encounter with a former pick-up (that other Finch, Jon) and there is that engrossing scene where he visits the all-night Chemist in Piccadilly and gets absorbed watching the addicts waiting for their fixes).

Glenda meanwhile collects her messages, grimaces as she makes instant coffee with water from the hot water tap and grinds cigarette ash into the carpet. The doctor plays charades with his friends, while Alex and Bob take Vivian’s children out for a walk on the Heath. (I understand the young Daniel Day-Lewis was one of them). Things come to a head with Bob deciding to move to America, leaving his art sculpture for the doctor to look at, while Glenda is left with the toucan. Both Alex and Daniel meet and briefly compare notes as they are due to join Pickles and family (and their token black person) for Sunday lunch, as life on Sunday goes on.

Schlesinger directs

SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY still plays perfectly and is a  milestone gay interest title and one of the key works of '70s British cinema (along with Losey’s THE GO-BETWEEN and Roeg’s DON’T LOOK NOW), it dealt more frankly with homosexuality than any British film before – even Bogarde’s VICTIM. Finch and Jackson deliver powerful performances that tug the heartstrings, conveying the fear, vulnerability and sadness that enslaves their characters to a rather worthless young man. Finch has never been better – well, maybe as his OSCAR WILDE in 1960 and the later NETWORK – than in his last long scene talking direct to the camera, while Jackson has one of her most sympathetic roles. 

The Finches: Peter and Jon

It was actually started with actors Ian Bannen as Daniel, and Hiram Keller - the dark haired one from FELLINI SATYRICON -  as Bob, but this did not work out at all. With Bessie Love, and June Brown (later Dot Cotton in EASTENDERS). It captures that essential Britishness and is a great London film too showing how that priviledged section of society conduct their weekends. Certainly one of Schlesinger’s best, up there with A KIND OF LOVING, BILLY LIAR or DARLING. That gay kiss causes quite a few gasps in provincial cinemas too at the time, as I can attest, when I saw it a second time at a cinema in Dover in Kent, while waiting for friends to return from France. More comments on it at Finch/London labels.

People We Like: Peter Finch

I had been meaning to get around to featuring Peter Finch as a Person We Like .... here's an 'Appreciation' I wrote over at IMDB back in 2009 .... (still to do: David Warner, Peter McEnery, Flora Robson, Vivian Pickles).

“Despite being one of the finest actors of his generation, Peter Finch will be remembered as much for his reputation as a hard-drinking, hell-raising womaniser as for his performances on the screen”, begins Finch’s biography details on his imdb page. Finch is perhaps now best remembered for his barnstorming turn as Howard Beale “the mad prophet of the airwaves” in Sidney Lumet’s NETWORK, for which he won the best actor Oscar in 1977, the only one to be awarded posthumously – though that may change if, as predicted, Heath Ledger wins this year.

Finch was actually born in London in 1912 but moved to Australia where he gradually got into acting. Discovered by the Oliviers during their tour of Australia in 1948 he returned to London with them, under contract to Olivier. One of the pleasures of watching English movies of the '50s is seeing him working his way up to becoming one of the most interesting leading men around.

Early roles included the Sheriff in ROBIN HOOD AND HIS MERRIE MEN (’52) and the arch-villain in FATHER BROWN in 1954, Alec Guinness being the detective priest of the title. ELEPHANT WALK (left)  teamed him with Elizabeth Taylor, a replacement for Vivien Leigh who had began the film but had suffered a breakdown. Finch had inevitably become involved with Leigh, as he did with Kay Kendall [before she met Rex Harrison] with whom he appeared in the 1955 comedy SIMON AND LAURA, a still funny satire on a famous theatrical couple (shades of the Oliviers perhaps) venturing into a tv sit-com. Its so perfectly mid-50s Rank Organisation fare with those great supporting players of the time.

A TOWN LIKE ALICE in 1956 cemented his reputation, as did war films like BATTLE OF THE RIVER PLATE, and films set in Australia like THE SHIRALEE (about an itinerant drover and his child). A childhood memory is being taken to see ROBBERY UNDER ARMS in 1958, almost a western about outlaws in the early days of Australia – exciting stuff.

THE NUN’S STORY in 1959 remains a timeless classic well-crafted by Zinnemann and was an enormous hit at the time, his role as Dr Fortunati being a perfect foil for Audrey Hepburn’s Sister Luke, as they work in the Congo hospital. Like Edith Evans’s mother superior it is a small but pivotal role.

This was followed by perhaps his most important role at the time: Oscar in THE TRIALS OF OSCAR WILDE, a fascinating and intelligent working of the Wilde story and for a movie made in 1960 about as frank as it could be. Finch was a magnificent Wilde capturing the facets of the writer knowingly facing his destiny, and winning a BAFTA award. Yvonne Mitchell was the perfect Constance, and John Fraser as petulant a Bosie as Jude Law in the 90s Stephen Fry film. There was another version of the Wilde story made at the same time in 1960 with Robert Morley (playing Wilde as Robert Morley), but the Finch version directed by Ken Hughes won hands down, with handsome period detail. James Mason and Nigel Patrick shone as opposing barristers and Lionel Jeffries was a malevolent Marquis of Queensbury. The film still holds up perfectly today.

This was followed by another one set in Africa THE SINS OF RACHEL CADE in 1961 where Angie Dickinson is the missionary with a mission. Having seen this for the first time this week it was quite engrossing with Finch as ever providing solid support as the French Colonel. There was also an Alan Breck in a Disney KIDNAPPED, and a gritty English political film NO LOVE FOR JOHNNIE directed by Ralph Thomas with Finch as the labour politician compromising his values, the excellent cast included Billie Whitelaw and Stanley Holloway.

Some solid leading roles followed as Finch was breaking into American films, mostly set in Europe: I have not seen IN THE COOL OF THE DAY with Angela Lansbury and a young Jane Fonda, but I THANK A FOOL with Susan Hayward set partly in Liverpool and in Ireland is certainly an oddity where Hayward is a doctor convicted of a mercy killing by judge Finch who then hires her when she comes out of prison to look after his mentally disturbed wife, with inevitable results…

Two good ones followed: Jack Clayton’s THE PUMPKIN EATER in 1964 where he is Anne Bancroft’s husband growing exasperated with her constant child-bearing and involved with a young Maggie Smith. It was played intensely by all concerned, including James Mason as a very annoyed husband. Bancroft does a harrowing breakdown in Harrods store, and there is that delicious scene with her and Maggie Smith as Philpot, script by Harold Pinter and Penelope Mortimer, from her novel.

THE GIRL WITH GREEN EYES is a lyrical Woodfall film, also 1964, from Edna O’Brien’s novel where he is the mature man getting involved with young Rita Tushingham. For anyone Irish the early 60s Irish background is perfectly captured, Lynn Redgrave is her more out-going friend Baba and its all perfectly realised including that bittersweet ending when the girls leave on the ferry for a new life in England (as I did myself at that time).

THE FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX was a solid Robert Aldrich film in 1965, then two more European ones: with Melina Mercouri and Romy Schneider in Dassin’s 10.30 PM SUMMER, trying to put Marguerite Duras’s world of the indolent rich travelling around Spain on screen (Pauline Kael was particularly rich on it..) and JUDITH (above) with Sophia Loren which should have been good but was so forgettable I cannot remember anything about it despite liking the 3 leads (Jack Hawkins was also involved).

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD was another popular and critical success in 1967 as Schlesinger captured Thomas Hardy with Julie Christie as Bathsheba (perhaps too modern to be a convincing Victorian), Alan Bates as Gabriel Oak and Terence Stamp as the dashing Captain Troy. Finch is Farmer Boldwood and the pastoral scene is idealised in Nicholas Roeg’s photography. It’s an enduring great version of a great book. THE RED TENT in 1969 is another polyglot effort I have not seen, with Connery and Cardinale leading the international cast, and another Robert Aldrich – the little seen THE LEGEND OF LYLAH CLARE with Kim Novak – is an interesting oddity. I have not seen it but have just got a copy, so it should be fascinating viewing.

Then came SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY in 1971, Schlesinger’s enduring film about a particular slice of London society, the intelligentsia and how they spend their Sundays, as devised by writer Penelope Gilliatt. Finch excels himself as Dr Daniel Hirsch, the Jewish doctor in love with young artist Murray Head, as is Glenda Jackson in one of her most sympathetic roles as the career woman realising her romance is not going anywhere. Their backgrounds are carefully shown while we do not learn much about the young artist – in fact the puzzle is why would two such well rounded people bother with someone so shallow. Finch has a great scene at the all night chemist watching the addicts waiting for their fixes after meeting a previous pickup of his, Jon Finch, while Glenda grimaces as she drinks instant coffee made from the hot water tap and grinds cigarette ash into the carpet as she is left with the toucan. Finch who replaced Ian Bannen in the role should really have won every award going [as should have Bogarde the previous year for DEATH IN VENICE] if only for that speech to the camera at the end, but it was Gene Hackman’s year. IMDB has quite a lot on its making and that famous gay kiss in its material about the film. Like Losey's THE GO-BETWEEN it was one of the year's must-sees.

Some routine films followed: with Shelley Winters in the forgettable SOMETHING TO HIDE, with Glenda again in BEQUEST TO THE NATION (he is Nelson to her Lady Hamilton), Graham Greene’s ENGLAND MADE ME, and with Liv Ullmann in the little seen THE ABDICATION continuing the story of Queen Christina. He was with Ullmann again in the widely derided musical remake of LOST HORIZON in 1973 – again Pauline Kael was particularly amusing writing about it, and as Bette Midler said “I never miss a Liv Ullmann musical”. Filmed in Burbank for Ross Hunter it gave bland a whole new dimension.

Then came NETWORK in 1976 with Finch as Howard Beale holding his own with William Holden and Faye Dunaway in this satire on television ratings by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Lumet. An enduring key 70s film which Finch followed with a tv film RAID ON ENTEBBE. 1976 was really Robert De Niro’s breakthrough year with TAXI DRIVER, so the award nominations were particularly interesting that year. Finch of course was nominated but died suddenly in January 1977 - he was 65 and happily married for the third time - and was the best actor winner that year. His widow accepted the award on his behalf.

It’s a great career of highs and not many lows by one of the most charismatic leading men of his time. Like Dirk Bogarde and James Mason he certainly took risks others wouldn’t have and remains a fascinating figure. I would say THE NUN'S STORY, THE TRIALS OF OSCAR WILDE, SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY and NETWORK are his best work which will certainly endure. Finchie too got to work with a lot of ladies we like from Kay and Liz to Julie and Romy and Susan and Faye, Audrey, Sophia, Melina, and Dames Glenda and Bancroft ....

Wilde at heart

• Oscar goes touring: As per the report below, the Wilde play is now going on tour after its sell-out run in London. It should prove popular in Oscar's hometown Dublin, at the Gaiety Theatre for a week in October, followed by a week each at Bath, Brighton, Cambridge, Richmond - pity its not heading north - a friend in Liverpool would have liked to have caught it.... 

To the perfectly situated and sized Hampstead Theatre at Swiss Cottage, in London, for the new production of David Hare's play about Oscar Wilde THE JUDAS KISS - a matinee performance for this sold-out revival. Going to the theatre in the afternoon is rather nice, particularly when the modern theatre has cafe and bar facilities and pleasant outdoor seating areas, and is not so big that one is way back in the stalls - plus one is home by teatime without having to give up an evening and getting back late! Ideal. 

I was intrigued to see this production as I also saw the original 1998 one with Liam Neeson as Oscar and Tom Hollander as Lord Alfred Douglas, or Bosie - ably played here by Freddie Fox, actor son of Edward. Rupert Everett commands the stage as Oscar and captures that florid quality perfectly from the moment he sweeps in in Act One to spending most of Act Two sitting in a chair. The rest of the cast are perfect too, and are kept quite busy on stage as well as dressing and undressing - in fact Tom Colley (below, left) as Bosie's Italian friend is naked practically throughout.

Ben Hardy, that other young actor (now in EASTENDERS) is also naked at the start, as the young waiter, which certainly makes the audience sit up! Rupert, so amusing the other week in a re-run of MY BEST FRIEND'S WEDDING captures Wilde at these 2 key moments dealt with in the play. We first see him holed up at the Cadogan Hotel in 1895 before being arrested, as everyone tries to persuase him to flee to Europe, and the thoroughly unpleasant Bosie goes into drama queen mode.  Act 2 is 2 years later in Italy in 1897 as the ruined - both his health and financially, after 2 years hard labour in jail - Wilde contemplates his downfall and realises how Bosie has betrayed him, as he will not give up his family allowance and prepares to leave Wilde once again. Oscar achieves pure pathos here. Below: Freddie as Bosie with Tom Colley as the Italian.

Wilde of course lived on to November 1900 when he died aged 46 - his major works (apart from "De Profundis" were completed by the time he was 40). Bosie lived on to be 74 and died in 1945 - a bitter Narcissus indeed. If only Oscar too could have lived to his seventies, he would have been a star of radio and film and been rehabilitated as the wit and commentator he was and he would have been earning royalties again. His great tomb with its "Modernist Angel” sculpture (right) by Jacob Epstein has been cleaned and restored to its former glory at Pere Lechaise cemetry in Paris (I have been to it twice) and is that famous cemetry's most visited resting place, along with Jim Morrison's... 

Liam & Tom in 1998

The roles of Wilde and Douglas here are hugh with lots of dialogue - I felt for the actors having to do it all again that evening ... it is an engrossing thought-provoking play. Oscar was so much more than the grandiloquent poseur he is often remembered as. His ideas and philosophy resonate today as strongly as they ever did and his work has stood the test of time, living on as so much more than mere entertainment. Over a century after his death he remains one of the great Irish writers, a playwright of genius as well as a thinker and proponent of ideas who transformed his age. Hare's play shows him as a man in the grip of a passion he could not resist, who could not see the amoral and unworthy wastrel that was his nemesis, and so he brings disaster on himself. One can see too that Oscar could not be discreet as others (Robbie, the hotel staff here including that enterprising young waiter played by Ben Hardy) but had to immolate himself on the alter of his grand passion. Hare's rounded portrait of Wilde captures all this expertly.

The story of his wife Constance too is utterly tragic (as shown in that excellent well-received recent biography on her); she died 2 years before Oscar - I remember reading in one of the Wilde books how he visited her grave (in Genoa) and pondered at the sadness and waste of it all. He was then that haunted impoverished (but hopefully happy) outcast in Paris in 1900 as the new century (which would surely have embraced him) began. Instead he, as the legend goes, turned to the wall of that Paris hotel room with the hideous wall-paper and said "one of us has to go". Of his two sons - he was a devoted father too - one of them died in the First World War. We will always though have the plays, the novel, the fairy tales, the aphorisms, the wit that so entranced his audiences and friends like Lily Langtry, Sarah Bernhardt and the rest. The story of Oscar: the talent, the rise and fall - as per the plethora of books about him and that era [the reckless "feasting with panthers", his indiscretions at London hotels and assignations with youths like Alfonso Conway in Worthing, which didn't go down well in court] will continue to fascinate - and what great actress doesn't want to have a go at Lady Bracknell or Miss Prism or Mrs Cheveley?

Other Wildes: I like Peter Finch's in the 1960 film - which I will be returning to before too long. The Robert Morley one, also 1960, was just not in the same league. The 1997 Stephen Fry one was also screened again recently and was of course more explicit than they could have been in 1960, with Fry rather lightweight I thought, but Jude Law a perfect Bosie and a great supporting cast. Peter Egan was an amusing Oscar too in the '70s series on Lily Langtry. The BBC boxset on Wilde productions is well worth discovering too with perfect 1970s productions of the plays (casts include Gielguld, Margaret Leighton, Jeremy Brett) and a documentary on the man himself. Rupert Everett is a great Oscar too and deserves to be remembered come theatre awards season..

Summer re-runs: Woman in a dressing gown

My pal Stan liked this one. I mentioned it last week when writing about BITTER HARVEST (below) as it too was written by Ted Willis, that well-known '50s writer of TV dramas, and now here it is back in selected cinemas. Well directed by J.Lee Thompson in 1957 it is a solid drama about an untidy woman, forever in that dressing gown, letting the housework getting on top of her, annoying her rising executive husband Anthony Quayle, whose modern go-getting secretary, that bitchy Sylvia Syms, wants him for herself ..... as it focuses on that emerging rising class of middle-management in those new office blocks. Can poor Yvonne Mitchell hang on to her man and get over her depression and clean up her house? Great cast of course and that downbeat '50s milieu anticipates the Kitchen Sink era to follow ... Yvonne Mitchell (who was also a writer) was wonderful in these roles (YIELD TO THE NIGHT, THE DIVIDED HEART, TIGER BAY, CONSPIRACY OF HEARTS, SAPPHIRE and her marvellous Constance opposite Peter Finch in the 1960 TRIALS OF OSCAR WILDE (Finch, Mitchell labels) and a great '73 BBC series of Colette's CHERI. She died in 1979 (aged 63) after playing Glenda Jackson's maid in THE INCREDIBLE SARAH - I must dig that one out, it would be a hilarious summer treat !