New York State Writers Institute - Classic Film Series

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THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST

February 5, 1999 (Friday) at 7:30 p.m.
Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue
(Free and Open to the Public)

(United Kingdom, 1952, 95 minutes, color, 16 mm)
Directed by Anthony Asquith
Starring Michael Redgrave, Michael Denison, Edith Evans,
Joan Greenwood, Dorothy Tutin

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It took 57 years for Irish playwright Oscar Wilde's wittiest play to make it to the screen. Relying on Wilde's epigrams and bon mots, director-writer Anthony Asquith made no attempt to make this comedy of manners set in Victorian England more cinematic. This classic tells of Jack and Algy, two well-to-do bachelors enamored of two women who both have a fixation about falling in love with men named Ernest.