Though Peter Finch wasn't director Ken Hughes' first choice for the lead in 1960's The Trials of Oscar Wilde, he seems more fitting than Laurence Olivier or Alec Guinness (it doesn't hurt that he was also a published poet). Though the film was not a box office success, Finch would garner acclaim for his work.
It begins during the London premiere of Lady Windermere's Fan, where Wilde, signature green carnation pinned to his lapel, revels in the adulation. Hughes uses the occasion to introduce his wife, Constance (Yvonne Mitchell), his great friend, Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas (Repulsion's John Fraser), and his greatest foe, the Marquess of Queensberry (Stage Fright's Lionel Jeffries), Bosie's disapproving father.
Wilde, unfortunately, was playing with fire when he took up with Bosie, a poet 16 years his junior. Though the film gives no indication if they consummated their relationship, unlike 1997's Wilde—which definitively answers that question--Wilde lavishes attention on the young man, particularly after the Marquess disinherits him. Wilde pays Bosie's hotel, restaurant, and tailoring bills, even as his own finances are stretched thin, though it encourages him to work even harder to produce another hit play.
He gets his wish with The Importance of Being Earnest, but his high spirits come to an end when the Marquess accuses him of "posing as a sodomite," a crime in the UK of the 19th century. Instead of letting it go, Wilde accuses him of libel. Hughes depicts the ensuing trials where evidence sways juries against him, from a love letter to Bosie to testimony from Bosie's low-life associates, including a valet who had attempted to blackmail Wilde by making the letter public. While the Marquess emerges unscathed, Wilde serves a sentence of two years of hard labor. The film ends with him trading London for Paris--for good.
Though Peter Finch wasn't gay, he would make history when he kissed Murray Head in John Schlesinger's Sunday Bloody Sunday, a minor gesture now that made the film controversial in its day. In addition, John Fraser would acknowledge his homosexuality in his 2004 memoir.
If Hughes' film, which draws from John Furnell's play The Stringed Lute and Montgomery Hyde's book The Trials of Oscar Wilde, avoids words like "gay" and "queer," it's always clear what's going on, and Finch makes Wilde a sympathetic, if self-sabotaging figure—even as the director downplays the injustices he suffered, like the poor health prison life engendered.
John Simon, a famously rigorous film critic, proclaimed The Trials of Oscar Wilde "an unjustly neglected movie," and he's not wrong (though it's better remembered than the other Wilde biopic released in 1960). If coy by today's standards, it's a fair accounting of Oscar Wilde's life from 1895-1897, and Finch's performance deserves to be remembered alongside his acclaimed turns in Sunday Bloody Sunday and Sidney Lumet's Network for which the actor would win a posthumous Oscar for playing his best-loved character, a freethinking media personality like Wilde: "mad as hell" evening newscaster Howard Beale.
What type of library programming could use this title?
Library programming on LGBTQ history or 19th-century literary figures could make good use of The Trials of Oscar Wilde.
What academic subjects would this film be suitable for?
The Trials of Oscar Wilde would be suitable for courses on LGBTQ history and British law in the 1800s, particularly libel law and the crime of “gross indecency.”
What kind of film series would this narrative fit in?
Film series on LGBTQ icons could benefit from The Trials of Oscar Wilde, possibly in contrast with more recent films, like Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's Howl, which recreates Allen Ginsburg's obscenity trial.