Whenever any play is adapted for the cinema, one will find people complaining "It's less than three hours long! It isn't all set in one room! What a travesty!" The fact is that theatre and cinema are different media, and adaptations have to recognise this. There are a lot of lines I miss in this adaptation but one can't put a play of this length on the screen without cuts, and one can't cut Wilde without cutting brilliant one-liners, so it was inevitable that some people's favourite lines would be gone. (Having played Lane myself, I'm attached to his comment that "I have only been married once, and that was in consequence of a misunderstanding": but the discussion had nothing to do with the plot and would have held up the pace of the film.) The 1952 version is one of the best examples there is of filmed theatre. This is a fine example of a play successfully ADAPTED to film. The scene switches are the only way to maintain on the screen the play's galloping pace. (Dialogue can do that unassisted in the theatre, but film is a visual medium: it may seem obvious, but a lot of critics don't seem to understand it. One that I've read has dismissed Kenneth Branagh's _As You Like It_ unseen because it will, er, actually render the Forest of Arden instead of asking the audience to imagine it. That's how blinkered they are.) The design is exquisite and the cast perfect (one expects as much from Judi Dench and Colin Firth, but Reese Witherspoon's flawless accent and extraordinary charm make her perhaps even more impressive, while Rupert Everett, an actor of frankly limited range, is for once in his element as a character one suspects is very like himself.) The "additional" dialogue is in fact mostly salvaged from the four-act version Wilde originally wrote, while the few lines which are added take care of necessary exposition economically and without the least incongruity.
No other filmed version can make me laugh as much as seeing the play live. This one can. Parker, after a disappointing start with _Othello_, has become an excellent film-maker.
No other filmed version can make me laugh as much as seeing the play live. This one can. Parker, after a disappointing start with _Othello_, has become an excellent film-maker.