The film opens with Oscar Wilde's 1882 visit to Leadville, Colorado during his lecture tour of the United States. The film also sees Orlando Bloom make his screen debut. Starring as Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas, Jude Law was nominated for the Evening Standard British Film Award for Most Promising Newcomer. Jennifer Ehle (as Oscar's wife Constance Lloyd Wilde) and Zoë Wanamaker (as Ada Leverson) were both nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. Fry received critical acclaim for his performance as well as for his likeness to Wilde, and was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actor – Drama. The screenplay by Julian Mitchell is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1987 biography of Oscar Wilde by Richard Ellmann. The outcome of the trial is hardly a spoiler, and ‘Reading Gaol’, in which Wilde is incarcerated, is HM Prison Oxford, New Road, alongside Castle Mound, Oxford.Īfter his release from prison after two years, it’s back to Spain again for the ‘Italian’ cemetery where Wilde visits his wife’s grave, and for the ‘French’ sidewalk café, where he decides to meet Bosie again, which can both be found in Granada.Wilde is a 1997 British biographical film directed by Brian Gilbert and starring Stephen Fry in the title role. The ornate red-brick exterior seen in the film is 2 South Audley Street (you can see its equally gorgeous interior in Howards End), behind the Hilton Hotel in Mayfair. The hotel is still in business, but it stands on a busy and modernised street. He was arrested for ‘gross indecency’ while staying at the Cadogan Hotel, 75 Sloane Street, at Pont Street in Chelsea. The details of his private life are inevitably made public and the writer falls prey to the draconian laws of the period. It’s Luton Hoo, Hotel, Golf and Spa, near Luton in Bedfordshire, north of London, which has been featured in Four Weddings And A Funeral, Eyes Wide Shut, Never Say Never Again and A Shot In The Dark among many others.Īs Wilde pursues Bosie’s father, the apoplectic Marquess of Queensberry ( Tom Wilkinson) in a reckless libel action, the law court exteriors are those of Middle Temple, Lincoln’s Inn, tucked away south of the Strand, just where it morphs into Fleet Street, in London EC4. Then a stately home (and open to the public), it now really is a hotel. Wilde and Bosie make up after their blazing row at a grand hotel, which is another familiar location. Wilde film location: the drinking den in which Robbie Ross consoles Wilde’s discarded love John Gray: Jamaica Wine House, St Michael’s Alley, Cornhill, City of London Meanwhile, Wilde’s wife, Constance ( Jennifer Ehle), hints at marital problems to Lady Mount-Temple ( Judy Parfitt), on the beach overlooked by the spectacular natural arch of Durdle Door, west of West Lulworth between Weymouth and Swanage on the B3070 in Dorset, a location also seen in John Schlesinger’s Thomas Hardy adaptation Far From the Madding Crowd.Īt Swanage itself is the traditional Victorian Swanage Pier where Wilde takes his kids fishing while suffering from a cold. Spoiled and petulant opportunist Bosie ( Jude Law) confides his fear of blackmail to Wilde alongside the River Cherwell in the grounds of Magdalen College, Oxford, which actually was Wilde’s alma mater (and if you’re visiting, remember it’s pronounced ‘Maudlin’). It’s still there, but Addle Hill itself has been redeveloped. Originally the St Paul’s Choir School, it became a YMCA. The elaborate Victorian shopfront was added to the undistinguished modern southwest corner, but the highly decorated Venetian-style building on Carter Lane is real enough. The little passageway of Addle Hill, off Carter Lane, tucked away south of St Paul’s Cathedral, is the street where Wilde gets the first intimations of his true sexuality as he watches a bunch of working class youths (well, the group does include Orlando Bloom – in his first screen appearance). The auditorium and the bar are the more modest Richmond Theatre>, The Green, Richmond, seen in many previous films, including The Krays, Evita, and as the ‘Duke of York’s’ theatre, where Peter Pan premieres in Finding Neverland, with Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet and Dustin Hoffman. The imposing frontage seen in the film is, of course, the Palace Theatre, dominating Cambridge Circus on Charing Cross Road, home of big musicals. His play Lady Windermere’s Fan opens at the ‘St James’s Theatre’, which stood on King Street in London’s West End until being demolished in 1957. Wilde film location: the interior of the ‘St James Theatre’: Richmond Theatre, The Green, Richmond, Surrey
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