DVD Review: The Happy Prince

The Happy Prince
[DVD Happy]

I’ve been fascinated by Oscar Wilde ever since seeing a stage production of The Importance of Being Earnest directed by my father at Nebraska Wesleyan in my youth, and then stumbling across numerous witty and biting quotes attributed to Wilde over the years. He’s a giant figure in the world of English literature, despite having only a limited selection of written works, including the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.

The Happy Prince is written and directed by actor Rupert Everett, who also stars in it as Wilde, in the final few years of his life. Despite his superstar status as a British playwright, Wilde ended up dying destitute and nearly friendless, in a cheap Parisian hotel. Wilde lived a non-traditional life, reveling in the arts and partaking in “beauty” in whatever forms he found it. In the case of his interpersonal relationships, this means he found both women and men to be beautiful and had relationships with both genders. It was his relationship with the younger man, Lord Alfred Douglas, that led to his downfall. He was accused of being a “posing sodomite” by Douglas’ father, The Marquess of Queensbury. When Wilde sued the Marquess for slander, it backfired on him, and his relationships with Lord Douglas and other young men were brought into the public eye, resulting in Wilde being convicted of “Gross Indecency” and sentenced to two years of hard labor. While in prison, he was injured — injuries that plagued him the rest of his relatively-short life. He was also abandoned by most of his friends and supporters, and his relationship with his wife and two sons was destroyed. In order to find someplace where he would not be hounded by the ghosts of his past, Wilde settled in Paris, but was never able to revitalize his writing career. This film covers those final years in Paris, with flashbacks to some of the times of his life in England, ultimately leading to the circumstances that culminated in his death at the age of 46.

This film is sumptuous to look at — the production design and costumes are superb. The performances are all quite excellent, particularly Everett as Wilde (though at 60 he appears too old as Wilde, in my opinion). I can only give this one a lukewarm recommendation, though — the pacing is irregular, and the plot is told by jumping back and forth in time in a way that provides for little sense of cohesion. The “Happy Prince” refers to an elaborate story Wilde shares, first with his two young sons, and later with two Parisian street urchins.

The Lincoln Community Playhouse will be producing an Oscar Wilde festival, with two concurrent plays in late January and early February — Wilde’s own play The Importance of Being Earnest will alternate performances with “Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde”, a play written by Moises Kaufman about the real life of Oscar Wilde and the three court trials that led to his downfall, conviction and imprisonment. Auditions will be Sunday, November 24th and Monday, November 25th for both plays.

[Note: Wilde (and 50,000 others) was pardoned in 2017 with the passage of “The Policing and Crime Act” (a.k.a. “The Alan Turing Law”), which decriminalized same-sex relationships in England.]

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to track down the film Wilde (1997), starring Stephen Fry as Oscar Wilde.] [Also sample Oscar Wilde’s body of work (novels, plays, essays) in traditional print and digital formats.]

[ Internet Movie Database entry for this film ] | [ official The Happy Prince web site ] | [ Wikipedia page for Oscar Wilde ]

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library

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