![]() ![]() Oscar Wilde (1960) and The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960) ![]() A long-delayed animated feature starring Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie and Miranda Hart is expected at some point. I’ve selected the Pat Stewart take as it hews closer to Wilde’s story. The late Leslie Phillips appears as the present-day George, Lord Canterville. Many versions of The Canterville Ghost are available to watch online, including the 1986 TV movies with John Gielgud as the phantom 1996, Patrick Stewart and 1997, Ian Richardson. Wilde’s first published story has been adapted umpteen times, most famously in 1944 with Charles Laughton as the spectral Jacobean Sir Simon de Canterville, fated to roam the halls of his ancestral home until he overcomes his cowardice – quite unlike the original tale, where the ghost was cursed for killing his wife, and after being plagued by a rich American family who bought the hall finally found peace through the power of love (very much a Wildean theme). Here are selection of films inspired by Wilde that have also stood the test of time: Wilde (1997) – BBC iPlayer, Amazon Prime, Pluto TV To twist Wilde’s cruel jibe regarding Charles Dickens’s sickly waif, the tiresome Little Nell: ‘One must have a heart of stone to watch Mills adaptations without shedding a tear.’ ![]() As a child of the 1970s, I was introduced to Wilde via Michael Mills’s wonderfully affecting animated versions of The Selfish Giant (1971) and The Happy Prince (1974), which Thames Television were wont to play during the school holidays. And more than a century later, that appeal hasn’t faded: this year in England alone, The Importance of Being Earnest toured the north and Richard Strauss’s adaptation of Salome was performed at the Royal Opera House.īut some of the best adaptations of Wilde’s work can be found on screen. One or the other of us must go.’ĭespite Wilde’s precipitous fall from grace and the ignominy heaped upon him (his children had to change their surname to Holland), within a relatively brief time his plays were revived and books reissued to renewed popular acclaim. His last words were said to be: ‘My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. It is 122 years this week since Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde died – in exile, poverty and disgrace – at Paris’s shabby St Germain Hôtel d’Alsace. ![]()
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