5/5 Delightful and Witty, 100% Oscar, 100% gay!
  by Alberto M. Barral (new york)
This movie is witty, ingenious and terribly gay. It will lift your spirits to see these characters chirping away, even if you are hospitalized in a coma.

Edith Evans is Lady Bracknell, she is the funiest of the bunch, with an ideal horse-face that can only be found in families with at least five generations of British gentility. Her declamatory, accented, pompous speech is a delight, even asking for a scone sounds like the proclamation of a peerage coming from her. Michael Denison is totally affected and delightfully artificial as Algernon Moncrieff, this man could only be interested in high fashion and decorators and frankly I think part of the comedy is Oscar Wilde's trying to convince us that Victorian society was so dedicated to denial and mantaining social appearances as to believe this man would want to marry a woman when we know he would be having a nervous breakdown over her gown, the length of her veil, the right texture of paper on the invitation and the endless thank you notes. Even the way he eats a muffin is decidedly gay. Michael Redgrave is Jack Worthing and not that far from Algernon in posturing, over-dressing and mannerisms. They are perfect for each other, and they could have possibly started together the first line of haute couture and interior decor in England, instead we are led to believe that he is interested in romancing and marrying that goose of Gwendolen Fairfax as played by Joan Greenwood whose only merit is consistently dressing like she is on her way to a coronation. One of her headdresses early on is a full English garden in bloom, compressed into her limited head space, a feat that would have made even Marie-Antoinette jealous.
Dorothy Tutin as Cecily Cardew is perfectly annoying. She has the charm of a high-speed dentist drill, her voice is pitched and commanding, like a school mistress adminishing her charges, and is so persistently innocent and overwhelmingly pure one feels tempted to throw her head over heels into the Moulin Rouge for training on how to become a normal human being and stop being a professional virgin.
Perhaps the best performance of all is the delightful Margaret Rutherford as the eccentric, literary, Miss Letitia Prism. Her facial expressions are exquisite, her perfectly full cheeks and rotund body being the product of endless afternoons consuming jam, scones and Earl Gray tea. One regrets not being able to read the voluminous manuscript that she mistook for the baby, I am sure it could be turned into a best-seller comedy.

5/5 One of my favs!
  by Kris Klopfenstein (Brea, CA USA)
If you love, classic British comedy, this is for you. Oscar Wilde's wit is hilariously interpreted. Edith Evans (Lady Bracknell) and Margaret Rutherford (Miss Prism) are a delight! And Joan Greenwood's plummy performance (Gwendolyn) is not to be missed! The play is my all time favorite: I see it every chance I get. I bought this dvd for those times when it's been too long since the last time I've seen it on stage. I have the 2002 re-make as well, but the classic is in a class of it's own.

5/5 wholesome entertaimment for the kids and family
  by Larry Goldsmith (Mexico City, Mexico)
> Greetings from Amazon.com,
> Thanks to your kids and family DVD purchase, you can now get up to
> four parenting and family magazines at 50% off each. Eligible
> magazines include: FamilyFun, American Baby, Parents, Family Circle,
> Cookie and Pregnancy.

Oscar Wilde would have a more clever retort than I to the revelation that "The Importance of Being Earnest" is a "kids and family DVD," purchase of which entitles one to a 50 percent discount on such wholesome entertainment as "Cookie and Pregnancy" magazine.


4/5 Clever Film Version of Wilde's Masterpiece of Wit
  by Gary F. Taylor (Biloxi, MS USA)
Oscar Wilde's THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST debuted in London in 1895, and although the author himself fell from grace not long after the play was an immediate success and has remained so ever since--performed from one end of the world to the other, endlessly studied, constantly read. Over the years it has also received several film treatments, of which the 1952 Anthony Asquith version is easily the best.

EARNEST is both a farce and a comedy of manners, the former involving a screwball plot and the latter requiring the characters to move within a highly restrictive code of social behavior. Jack (Michael Redgrave) is a wealthy young man who has devised a handy scheme: when he is in London he goes by the name Earnest and pretends to have a dull brother brother named Jack who lives in the country; when he is in the country he goes by the name Jack and pretends to have a ne'er-do-well brother named Earnest who lives in the city. Unfortunately, he runs afoul of friend Algernon (Michael Denison), who has a similar scheme involving an imaginary invalid named Bunbury--and who has a beautiful cousin named Gwendolen (Joan Greenwood), whom Jack wishes to marry. It is a marriage greatly opposed by Gwendolen's mother, the Lady Bracknell (Edith Evans), who is a dragon of Victorian propriety.

As if these were not complications enough, having discovered Jack's secret, Algernon decides to crash Jack's country home posing as Jack's imaginary brother Earnest--and there falls madly in love with Jack's ward Cecily (Dorothy Tutin.) When Gwendolyn arrives by train, the two women discover they are both in love with "Earnest." Needless to say, the sparks soon begin to fly.

As is usually the case with Oscar Wilde, it isn't so much what you say as how you say it, and although the film script preserves as many of Wilde's most wickedly funny lines the cast falls a bit short. Redgrave is truly memorable, as is Greenwood, and Edith Evans and Margaret Rutherford, the latter as Cecily's governess Miss Prism, steal their every scene. But Denison and Tutin make the mistake of playing their roles with a wink and a nod, a fact that tends to undercut the humor. EARNEST is indeed a wildly funny show--but only if the characters don't know they are funny.

The Criterion DVD release presents the film in pristine condition and beautiful color; it does not, however, offer any bonuses worth mentioning. If you are a fan of Oscar Wilde, you'll likely enjoy this film--but you may not find it quite the zinger the play is in a really good production. Recommended with slight reservations.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

5/5 A classic version of a classic
  by Christopher Laird
This is without doubt THE classic film version of the classic Oscar Wilde social comedy, The Importance of Being Earnest. Featuring the best British stage and screen actors of the time beautifully realised by the famous Anthony Asquith it is one of those few films that can be enjoyed over and over both as a supreme example of the Wilde wit and for the gusto with which the actors revel in their performance of this satire on the British upper class. Cannot be bettered.