Sign In / Sign Up

The Importance of Being Earnest

The Importance of Being Earnest
Release date: 1952-06-02
Rating: 7.179
Votes: 120
Genres: Comedy
Two young gentlemen living in 1890s England use the same pseudonym ('Ernest') on the sly, which is fine until they both fall in love with women using that name, which leads to a comedy of mistaken identities.

Reviews

CinemaSerf

CinemaSerf

There's little point in outlining the plot here - it's not what the film is about. It is the combination of characterisations and the wonderfully witty writing of Oscar Wilde that make this a thoroughly enjoyable film to watch. It makes no bones about it's theatrical origins - even featuring a curtain at the start and the finish, and that sets us up for a cracker of a comedy that swipes at snobbery, pomposity, crass stupidity, deception and offers us a tour de force effort from the inimitable Dame Edith Evans ("Lady Bracknell"). Anthony Asquith has created a delightfully honest interpretation of the play - the dialogue is pithy and quickly paced, few lines are wasted and the talents of Michael Redgrave, Michael Denison, Dorothy Tutin, the perfectly cast Joan Greenwood as "Gwendoline" and Margaret Rutherford as the prim "Miss Prism" combine to give us a genuinely laugh-out-loud series of scenarios that are a joy to behold. It's colourfully set, the costumes a delight (though, I felt seriously gaudy at times!) and the comically timed mannerisms, gestures and charisma of the performers is great, too. It is rare for a piece of theatrical comedy to transfer so effortlessly to the big screen, but here it all looks so very natural...

Movie Recommendation

  • Joe Kidd
    Joe Kidd
    1972-07-19
    A band of Mexicans find their U. S. land claims denied and all the records destroyed in a courthouse fire. Their leader, Louis Chama, encourages them to use force to regain their land. A wealthy landowner wanting the same decides to hire a gang of killers with Joe Kidd to track Chama.
    More...
  • It Came from Outer Space
    It Came from Outer Space
    1953-06-05
    Author and amateur astronomer John Putnam and schoolteacher Ellen Fields witness an enormous meteorite come down near a small town in Arizona. Putnam becomes a local object of scorn when, after examining the object up close, he announces that it is a spacecraft, and that it is inhabited...
    More...
  • A Blueprint for Murder
    A Blueprint for Murder
    1953-07-24
    Whitney Cameron is in a quandary: he's attracted to his beautiful sister-in-law, Lynn, but also harbors serious suspicions about her. Her husband, Cameron's brother, died under mysterious circumstances, and now that the death of her stepchild, Polly, has been attributed to poisoning, he suspects that Lynn is after his late brother's estate, and killing everyone in her way.
    More...
  • Creamy Mami: Forever Once More
    Creamy Mami: Forever Once More
    1984-10-28
    The Space Kittens Pozi and Nega gave little Yu a magic baton and for a year she possessed the power to transform into grown up idol singer Creamy Mami and use her magic for good. Sometimes her powers caused more problems than they solved, and though everything worked out well she finally returned the baton. Ever since, Mami has been absent from the music scene, but suddenly her return is announced in a blaze of publicity. Yu and her friends uncover a campaign by bad boy Shingo to deceive the singer's many fans.
    More...
  • Pink Floyd: Momentary Lapses - The True Story of Pink Floyd
    Pink Floyd: Momentary Lapses - The True Story of Pink Floyd
    2010-03-08
    This is the independent film history of Pink Floyd. The controversial twists and turns of the Floyd story is told in a unique series of interviews featuring Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Nick Mason and the late Richard Wright. The recollections of the band are compared and contrasted the views of the insiders who worked with Pink Floyd in the studio and on the road.
    More...
  • Hue and Cry
    Hue and Cry
    1947-02-01
    A gang of street boys foil a master crook who sends commands for robberies by cunningly altering a comic strip's wording each week, unknown to writer and printer. The first of the Ealing comedies.
    More...
  • My Brother Jonathan
    My Brother Jonathan
    1948-02-05
    Jonathan Dakers' early ambition was to become a great surgeon and to marry Edie Martyn. But, on the death of his father, he is obliged to start work as a partner in a poor general practice in the Black Country. Edie falls in love with Jonathan's brother, Harold, who is killed in the Great War, and Jonathan marries her as planned. It is only afterwards that he realises he now loves another.
    More...
  • Mister Rogers: It's You I Like
    Mister Rogers: It's You I Like
    2018-03-06
    Join host Michael Keaton to celebrate "Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood," the pioneering children's series that premiered nationally 50 years ago. Celebrities, cast members and Joanne Rogers reveal their favorite memories from the series.
    More...
  • Force of Arms
    Force of Arms
    1951-08-13
    During the winter of 1943, the German Army halted the American advance in the mountains of Italy; back-and-forth combat decimates Joe Peterson's platoon. On leave in Naples, Joe meets WAC lieutenant Eleanor MacKay; initially cool, she begins to melt during a bombing raid. Their romance develops despite Joe's periodic returns to the front. But whether he'll come back in the end becomes more than doubtful.
    More...
  • Stop Press Girl
    Stop Press Girl
    1949-06-02
    A young woman leaves her backwards hometown to go to London to find a runaway suitor. What she doesn't know is that she has inherited a strange ability; if she's in the vicinity of a machine for more than fifteen minutes, it stops working.
    More...
  • Torrente, the Dumb Arm of the Law
    Torrente, the Dumb Arm of the Law
    1998-03-13
    A former policeman enlists his nerdy friend to help bust drug traffickers moving heroin through a Chinese restaurant.
    More...
  • The Beyond
    The Beyond
    1981-04-22
    A young woman inherits an old hotel in Louisiana where, following a series of supernatural "accidents", she learns that the building was built over one of the entrances to Hell.
    More...
  • Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
    Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
    1967-12-11
    A couple's attitudes are challenged when their daughter brings home a fiancé who is black.
    More...
  • The Abyss
    The Abyss
    1989-08-09
    A civilian oil rig crew is recruited to conduct a search and rescue effort when a nuclear submarine mysteriously sinks. One diver soon finds himself on a spectacular odyssey 25,000 feet below the ocean's surface where he confronts a mysterious force that has the power to change the world or destroy it.
    More...
  • The Two Popes
    The Two Popes
    2019-11-27
    Frustrated with the direction of the church, Cardinal Bergoglio requests permission to retire in 2012 from Pope Benedict. Instead, facing scandal and self-doubt, the introspective Pope Benedict summons his harshest critic and future successor to Rome to reveal a secret that would shake the foundations of the Catholic Church.
    More...
  • Panic Room
    Panic Room
    2002-03-29
    Trapped in their New York brownstone's panic room, a hidden chamber built as a sanctuary in the event of break-ins, newly divorced Meg Altman and her young daughter Sarah play a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with three intruders - Burnham, Raoul and Junior - during a brutal home invasion. But the room itself is the focal point because what the intruders really want is inside it.
    More...
  • Peter Pan
    Peter Pan
    1953-02-05
    Leaving the safety of their nursery behind, Wendy, Michael and John follow Peter Pan to a magical world where childhood lasts forever. But while in Neverland, the kids must face Captain Hook and foil his attempts to get rid of Peter for good.
    More...
  • Darkest Hour
    Darkest Hour
    2017-11-22
    In May 1940, the fate of World War II hangs on Winston Churchill, who must decide whether to negotiate with Adolf Hitler or fight on knowing that it could mean the end of the British Empire.
    More...
  • Just Go with It
    Just Go with It
    2011-02-10
    While romancing Palmer, a much younger schoolteacher, plastic surgeon Danny Maccabee enlists his loyal assistant Katherine to pretend to be his soon to be ex-wife, in order to cover up a careless lie. When more lies backfire, Katherine's kids become involved, and everyone heads off for a weekend in Hawaii that will change all their lives.
    More...
  • Don't Breathe
    Don't Breathe
    2016-06-08
    A group of teens break into a blind man's home thinking they'll get away with the perfect crime. They're wrong.
    More...

Similar Movies