THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST - #158

I hesitate to call The Importance of Being Earnest a trifle, as the literal meaning of the word, particularly when applied to an artistic endeavor, is to suggest that it's of little actual merit. This, of course, is not the case with Oscar Wilde's play, a comedic triumph that is a most distinct pleasure to watch (or read) in whatever form you find it, including this 1952 film version directed by Anthony Asquith. And yet, I like the idea of calling it a trifle because The Importance of Being Earnest is easy to consume, delightful for its duration, and altogether delectable. Not unlike the layered dessert which bears the same name. In fact, given the discussion of drink and cakes and other tasty treats during The Importance of Being Earnest, it would not be outlandish to make a comparison between Wilde's comedy and the booze-soaked confection where all manner of pleasing ingredients are stacked together to create a whole far more fulfilling than the sum of its parts.

In the 1952 version, Michael Redgrave stars as Ernest Worthing, the notorious bachelor with a scandalous backstory: as a baby, he was abandoned in a handbag in Victoria Station. He knows neither where he came from nor how he was lost. His surname was given to him because Worthing is where the man who found him was heading at the time. The subject of names and origins becomes important because Ernest wants to marry his posh paramour, Gwendolyn Fairfax (an appropriately stuffy Joan Greenwood). Ernest must produce some kind of proof to suggest he has aristocratic bearing to please Gwendolyn's mother, the Lady Bracknell (Edith Evans), a pushy old woman with unwavering beliefs in how things should be done. In doing this, Ernest will also have to reveal that his name is not Ernest at all, but John, a name Gwendolyn finds far too boring for a husband. Ernest is a fictional identity John created for himself for when he is in the city, allowing him to gadabout town while protecting his reputation at his country estate.

It's all rather complicated already, but given that The Importance of Being Earnest is considered a comedy of errors, the complications will only compound and multiply. (I can't help now but think of an actual trifle comedy of errors, when Rachel on Friends mixed her dessert recipe with one for shepherd's pie and made a trifle where meat and peas mingle with jam and custard. Oh, how much more can this metaphor withstand?) At his country home, Jack/Ernest has adopted his own ward, a young woman by the name of Cecily (Dorothy Tutin). It's for her sake that he wishes to remain untarnished and leave his London activities in London. Only, the scandalous tales of Jack's younger brother Ernest fascinate the sheltered girl, and she has fallen in love with the rapscallion sight unseen. Likewise, Gwendolyn's cousin and Ernest's friend, Algernon (Michael Denison), is intrigued by this lovely young innocent that apparently exists far from prying eyes. Ernest's insistence that they should never meet only further piques Algie's interests. He decides to go to where she is, not only to meet her, but to hold his buddy's feet to the fire. Once there, Algernon pretends to be the long lost Ernest the teenager has heard so much about.

What follows, of course, is a series of misunderstandings and dubious efforts on the part of both Jack and Algernon to prove they are who they say they are and thus both become earnest (i.e. serious husband material). Anthony Asquith moves the play from the stage to the screen without over-adapting it but still managing to free himself from the limited playing field that a theatrical performance understandably requires. Though one can still perceive the act breaks and most scenes remain in a single locale, Asquith uses the very cinematic tools of cutaways and close-ups to give the story movement and vivacity, while also giving each character his or her chance to shine. Redgrave and Denison, who comes off rather like the original Hugh Grant, have a good rapport, and their banter is marvelous. Both are verbally dexterous enough to handle Wilde's cleverest dialogue. The pair are only bested by the young women. The funniest and most biting scene in The Importance of Being Earnest is between Cecily and Gwendolyn, when they both believe they are engaged to the same Ernest and so attempt to one-up each other with evidence that the other is mistaken about the man's affections. The barbs are sharp and delivered coldly, underlined by amusing reaction shots from Cecily's attentive butler.

Even after all that, though, the real stars of The Importance of Being Earnest may be the old women, particularly Edith Evans. One can see in her performance a kind of stock or prototype for Maggie Smith's highly praised turn as the Dowager Countess on Downton Abbey [review]. Like Smith, Evans performance stands just outside of caricature, largely because she understands that the real humor is in how Lady Bracknell fails to recognize her own ghastliness. Her scathing disapproval is consistently upended by her ridiculous and often misguided opinions. Her counterpart, the sentimental and ironically none-too-bright tutor Miss Prism is also quite wonderful. In Downton Abbey, her equivalent might be the cook. She is played by Margaret Rutherford. Rutherford would be cast in many such bumbling roles in her career, establishing a sort of British comedic type in much the same way that Evans does (or, Wilde, depending on who you credit.) Prism's name is perhaps even a better pun than the one Wilde uses for his title and main character. This rather dense woman is the instrument through which the truth is finally seen. (It's somewhat fitting, then, that Margaret Rutherford went on to play Miss Marple in several movies adapting Agatha Christie.)

This droll layering of meaning is, of course, an essential component of Wilde's writing, both in his comedies and his dramas. One could actually see Ernest as a kind of distant cousin to Dorian Gray [review]. Thematically, both have invented a second persona to carry the burden of their sins, though with far different outcomes. In a way, Ernest's differing personas also represent a kind of reflection on the stages of life and growing up: when one is the younger brother, one is expected to have misadventures; as one is older, one must adopt a more responsible demeanor. There is also something amusing in how Ernest originally came to be lost, dropped inside a valise in place of an elaborate three-part fiction, Mrs. Prism's apparently dreadful, over-sentimental novel. In her confusion, Prism makes the choice of the dedicated artist, even if it is just a Freudian slip--the responsibility of children would distract her from her work. Discard the infant, nurture the muse!

While revisiting Asquith's appropriation of Wilde is always a joy unto itself, I should note that I pulled The Importance of Being Earnest off the shelf for another reason. Over the next two months, the Northwest Film Center in Portland, OR (where I live), will be conducting a course on “Literature Into Film.” Each week, students will read a work of literature for their Monday night class, and then on Wednesday, there will be public screenings of the corresponding cinematic appropriation. The Importance of Being Earnest leads the way, and will be shown this coming Wednesday, April 10, at 7pm. You don't have to be a member of the class to attend any of the films, and Criterion fans will want to check the full program, as there are other movies from the Collection featured (Children of Paradise and Last Year at Marienbad [review]), as well as Criterion-worthy selections like Robert Montgomery's The Lady in the Lake (a Philip Marlowe adventure), Michelangelo Anotonioni's Blow-Up, and John Frankenheimer's loopy Seconds.

PYGMALION - #85

The most telling business in the 1938 film version of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion comes about 2/3 of the way into the story, and it would be easy to dismiss as a throwaway comedic bit if you aren’t paying attention. Professor Henry Higgins (played by Leslie Howard, who also co-directed) is walking up his staircase, delivering what he assumes will be the last word in an argument. No sooner has he punctuated his sentence than he trips on the stairs and completely undermines the authority he has so tenuously laid out. Howard has a quick reaction before he gathers himself up and goes the rest of the way up the stairs, and in that nearly imperceptible instance, he sets the stage for the changes to come. In that moment, Henry Higgins experiences doubt in his own perfection.

It’s the cap of one of my two favorite scenes in the Leslie Howard/Anthony Asquith production of Pygmalion. Shaw’s play was based on the classic myth of the sculptor who chiseled his own perfect woman and brought her to life, and it would later be the basis of the musical My Fair Lady [review]. This brisk pre-War production is a better realization of Shaw’s original, however, sticking closer to the complex ideas. Indeed, it should, since Shaw wrote the screenplay himself. Pygmalion is a philosophical drama masquerading as a romantic comedy, and the Lerner and Loewe adaptation leans heavier on the light heart without working as hard to justify it.

For the unfamiliar, Professor Higgins is a linguist who specializes in British dialect. On a night out observing Cockney accents in the wild, he meets both one of his more revered colleagues, Colonel Pickering (Scott Sunderland), and a common flower girl named Eliza Doolittle (the splendid Wendy Hiller in her first role). Higgins makes an offhand comment about being able to tame the girl’s wild speech to such a degree that anyone would believe her a proper lady, and though he thinks nothing of it after it is said, Eliza takes it to heart. She shows up at his house the next day and asks to be given elocution lessons. Higgins and Pickering do her one better, concocting a scheme to transform the lower-class working girl completely.

What follows is a grueling course of language lessons, makeovers, and etiquette classes, culminating in a night out where Eliza charms the upper crust. The point now proved, Higgins thinks his work with the girl is complete. She is distraught at having been abandoned so completely, having harbored feelings for her stern teacher. (I am sure someone has written on the father issues at work here; Eliza’s own father is a drunken lout (Wilfrid Lawson) who “sold” his daughter to Higgins for a five-pound note.) When she leaves, after having verbally gutted Higgins thoroughly and completely, Higgins realizes he has feelings for her as well.

It’s actually that post-party sequence that ends in Higgins stumbling on the stairs. So many previously buried issues are dug up in that scene, it ends up being more memorable than even the heavier conversation in Pygmalion’s penultimate sequence, when the pair has it out for real. In this earlier argument, Shaw’s writing proves more agile. Higgins and especially Eliza say plenty of important things to each other without saying them outright, and the way they dance around touchy topics ends up revealing more about who they are than had they been more overt in their expression. Eliza very clearly sees the division between the classes and knows what is expected in less savory male/female transactions; Higgins dismisses the humanity possessed by others in deference to his own pride. Comparisons are regularly made between the Pygmalion myth and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Shaw is clearly aware of the thematic connection. He goes so far as to have Higgins refer to Eliza as a “creature” here. She is not human, she is an invention. The teaching montages are filmed at odd angles, distorted and exaggerated, partially comedic and partially macabre, looking like the heightened reality of a mad scientist’s workshop in a horror movie. Eventually, Eliza does feel marginalized, as if she is less of a person, and thus her anger stems from getting no credit for putting Higgins’ teachings into practice. He thinks the tutoring is the be-all and end-all, the student is as immaterial as the original corpse from which Igor has pilfered the body parts.

Were he not to trip on his way out, it would be impossible to see Henry Higgins as anything but a vain, self-important monster himself. In Pygmalion, hubris is undermined by comedy. This is most effectively employed in my other favorite scene. It happens much earlier in the picture, the morning after the night Eliza first comes to Higgins’ home. When he and Pickering sit down for breakfast, the professor’s maid (Jean Cadell) lectures Higgins on how to properly behave with a woman in the house. All of the faults that she highlights, including swearing, impatience, and slovenliness, are ones that Higgins has no self-awareness of, even if they are obvious to everyone around him (including the audience). It’s Higgins’ greatest fault: an oversized self-regard.

Leslie Howard is quite good as Higgins. He’s easily better than Rex Harrison, who is more known for the role due to My Fair Lady. Harrison’s portrayal was all braggadocio, with the actor seeming to approach the part from a position far above it. His ego wouldn’t let him stoop to the ugliness the role requires. Howard gets the puffery, but he also gets the pettiness. He’s particularly childish and nasty before he finally humbles himself.

That said, the true star here is Wendy Hiller. She is marvelous as Eliza Doolittle. She deals with the early comedy quite readily, including a hilarious scene when Eliza gets her first real bath, but without ever condescending to the character. In her hands, Eliza is a pure being with admirable intentions: to make herself better. Her determination gives over to efficiency, and she proves how valuable she can be when given the proper respect and the proper tasks. (One wonders how this escaped being an example seized on by Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique.) Her breakdown prior to her departure from Higgins’ house is heartbreaking--all the more so for the lack of histrionics. She approaches this perceived failure with the same determination she used to chase success.

This initial confrontation and the showdown that follows are both meaty and rich with ideas. The last “big” scene in Pygmalion shows the creation dismantling her creator piece by piece. Theirs is a layered argument, and one that you will likely end up conflicted about. There is no cut-and-dried meeting of the minds. Eliza asserts her independence and equality, and Higgins both accepts and applauds the same. He also maintains his own responsibility for her metamorphosis. She couldn’t have gotten there without him, and getting her there, ironically, has made him dependent on her. (A good modern analogue for this might be the dynamic between Don Draper and Peggy Olsen on Mad Men, particularly when considering the events in Season 5. Maybe, also, the film Secretary [review].) They acknowledge the common ground, they reaffirm their individual rights to traverse it, and then and only then can they come together under some semblance of love. What makes it interesting is that, in a way, they do this in order to accept more “traditional” roles of a male/female dynamic. The last line of Pygmalion is Higgins insisting that Eliza fetch his slippers, the ones that earlier she threw at his head. He doesn’t even look at her when he says it, and yet she’s happy to receive the command. It’s simultaneously conformist and iconoclastic. Rejection of a way of thinking opens the way to accepting it.

Both have grown and are happier for it, and they are now free to be who they want to be and, better yet, be that together.