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Trials of Oscar Wilde

Lead

Background:Feasting with Panthers and Feud with Queesnberry

Calling card incident

Queensberry libels OW at club, only porter sees it, misreads it. Douglas urges OW to sue, others counsel against retailiation. Wilde, insulted goes ahead.

Libel Trial OW sues Queensberry, Queensberry delighted with chance to prove his accusation.

Prosecution - libel against man of great liteary career. Evidence must be considered in proper artistic context. Pre-emptive production of letters, claimed they were sonnetts. Raises eyebrows but not hackles yet.

Carson Cross examination. Moral content of works. Factual evidence. Meeting of boys etc

Deference opening: Claims he will back up earlier claims with witnesses who are in the building. OW drops suit in disgrace,

1st Criminal prosecution Mechanics if allowing WIlde off. Suggestions to drop the suit, but arrest warrant served quickly, Wilde misses last chance to flee to France case now too famous to be dropped.

Reasonable trial

Hung Jury

2nd Criminal Trial

Alfred Wills, very against the crime. Allows all evidence previously dismissed.

Wilde convicted after Alfred Taylor

Severe sentence. Wilde's name one of revulsion. Family leaves England

Press coverage

Legal context, Victorian era

Imprisonment

Bankruptcy and divorce. Never to see his children again

De profundis, redemption

fin

Sources:

Foldy 1997

Ellmann 1988

Montgomery

Scarlet Marquess and Irish Peacock

Release

Oscar Wilde cuttings

The family was again struck by tragedy when Emily and Mary died in an accident in 1871. When the dress of one caught fire; her sister rushed her out of the house and down the steps to roll her in the snow, but her dress caught alight, and both died.

When Sir William died in 1876 his estate was found to be less substantial than his family had believed and produced little income. His illegitimate son, Henry Wilson, a physician who had entered practice with his father, supported his stepmother and half brothers financially while the executors sold some of Sir William's property to pay the estate debts and provide some funds for the family. Henry Wilson died unexpectedly in 1877.

Other political influences on Wilde may have been William Morris and John Ruskin.

Wilde was also a pacifist and quipped that "When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her."

Wilde was later to comment ironically when he wrote in The Picture of Dorian Gray that "All art is quite useless".

The university also offered a course in aesthetics, and the Museum Building, just built in 1861, had been inspired by John Ruskin's teachings.

De Profundis (letter)

He makes continuous references and allusions to books he has read in prison, primarily Dante and other religious texts. He adopts Christ as a symbol and motif of individualism.

The King's Speech

cinematorgaphy section

NYRB and New Yorker reviews

NYT review - use of fisheye lens

Ebert - use of interiors and oblong spaces to convey constriction

Theme of personal triumph

link with use of sets to create period setting

Visual style.

TKS:Visual style

Hooper employs a number of cinematic techniques to evoke the King's feelings of constriction. In The New York Times, Manohla Dargis wrote that the feeling of entrapment inside the King's head was rendered overly literal with a fisheye lens, though Hooper denied this, saying he had simply used wider than normal lenses photographing the film. Danny Cohen, the cinematographer confirmed that wider lenses were used, typically 14mm, 18mm, 21mm, 25mm and 27mm, where the subtle distortion of the picture helps to convey the King's discomfort.

Roger Ebert noted that the majority of the film is shot inside, where oblong sets, corridors and small spaces manifest constriction and tightness, in contrast to the usual emphasis on sweep and majesty in historical dramas. Hooper used wide shots to capture the actors' body language, particularly Geoffrey Rush who trained at the L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris and "is consequently brilliant in the way he carries his body". Hooper widened his scope first to capture Rush's gestures, then full body movements and silhouettes. The approach carried over to Firth as well. In the first consultation scene, the Duke is framed against a large wall squeezed against the end of a long couch, "as if to use the arm of the sofa as a kind of friend, as a security blanket?". Martin Filler praised the "low-wattage" cinematography of Danny Cohen, as making everything look like it has been "steeped in strong tea".

At other times, the camera was positioned very closely to the actors. Firstly, to catch emotion in their faces, "If you put a lens 6 inches from somebody's face, you get more emotion than if you're on a long lens 20 feet away," Cohen said in an interview. Hooper also sought a second subtlety after early-on filming the first consultation room scene between the two men, having placed the camera 18 inches from Colin Firth's face, I wanted the nervousness of the first day to percolate into his performances."

A second difference with the traditional approach to historical drama was in the lighting. They tend to use "soft light" but Hooper wanted to use a harsher glare, which gives a more contemporary feel, and thus a greater emotional resonance to the story. To achieve the effect, the lighting team erected huge blackout tents of the Georgian buildings, and used larger lights filtered through Egyptian cotton.

Inception:Themes and motifs

Origins

Penrose stairs are incorporated into the film as an example of the impossible objects that can be created in lucid dream worlds.

Inception was first developed by Christopher Nolan, based on the notion of "exploring the idea of people sharing a dream space...That gives you the ability to access somebody's unconscious mind. What would that be used and abused for?" Furthermore, he thought "being able to extract information from somebody's brain would be the obvious use of that because obviously any other system where it's computers or physical media, whatever – things that exist outside the mind – they can all be stolen ... up until this point, or up until this movie I should say, the idea that you could actually steal something from somebody's head was impossible. So that, to me, seemed a fascinating abuse or misuse of that kind of technology." Nolan drew inspiration from the works of Jorge Luis Borges when writing Inception, and also cited the 2006 anime film Paprika by the late Satoshi Kon as an influence on the character Ariadne.

Nolan had thought about these ideas on and off since he was sixteen years old, intrigued by how he would wake up and then, while falling back into a lighter sleep, hold on to the awareness that he was dreaming, a lucid dream. He also became aware of the feeling that he could study the place and alter the events of the dream. He said, "I tried to work that idea of manipulation and management of a conscious dream being a skill that these people have. Really the script is based on those common, very basic experiences and concepts, and where can those take you? And the only outlandish idea that the film presents, really, is the existence of a technology that allows you to enter and share the same dream as someone else." Harvard University dream researcher Deirdre Barrett points out that Nolan did not get every detail accurate regarding dreams, but that films which really do that tend to have illogical, rambling, disjointed plots which wouldn't make for a great thriller. "But he did get many aspects right," she said, citing the scene in which a sleeping DiCaprio is shoved into a full bath and water starts gushing into the windows of the building he is dreaming, waking him up. "That's very much how real stimuli get incorporated, and you very often wake up right after that intrusion.".

Ending

The film cuts to the closing credits from a shot of the top wobbling ambiguously, inviting speculation about whether the final sequence was reality or another dream. Nolan confirmed that the ambiguity was deliberate, saying "I've been asked the question more times than I've ever been asked any other question about any other film I've made... What's funny to me is that people really do expect me to answer it." The film's script concludes with "Behind him, on the table, the spinning top is STILL SPINNING. And we – FADE OUT" However, Christopher Nolan also said, "I put that cut there at the end, imposing an ambiguity from outside the film. That always felt the right ending to me – it always felt like the appropriate 'kick' to me… The real point of the scene – and this is what I tell people – is that Cobb isn't looking at the top. He's looking at his kids. He's left it behind. That's the emotional significance of the thing."

In a September 2010 interview, Michael Caine, who plays Cobb's father-in-law, explained his interpretation of the ending by saying, "If I'm there it's real, because I'm never in the dream. I'm the guy who invented the dream." Nolan himself noted that "I choose to believe that Cobb gets back to his kids, because I have young kids. People who have kids definitely read it differently than those who don't". He indicated that the top was not the most crucial element of the ending, saying "I've read plenty of very off-the-wall interpretations... The most important emotional thing about the top spinning at the end is that Cobb is not looking at it. He doesn't care."

Reality and dreams

In Inception, Nolan wanted to explore "the idea of people sharing a dream space...That gives you the ability to access somebody's unconscious mind. What would that be used and abused for?" The majority of the film's plot takes place in these interconnected dream worlds. This structure creates a framework where actions in the real or dream worlds ripple across others. The dream is always in a state of production, and shifts across the levels as the characters navigate it. By contrast, the world of The Matrix (1999) is an authortarian, computer-controlled one, alluding to theories of social control developed by Michel Foucault and Jean Baudrillard. Nolan's world has more in common with the works of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.

David Denby compared Nolan's cinematic treatment of dreams to Luis Buñuel's in Belle de Jour (1967) and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972). He criticised Nolan's "literal-minded" action level sequencing compared to Buñuel, who "silently pushed us into reveries and left us alone to enjoy our wonderment, but Nolan is working on so many levels of representation at once that he has to lay in pages of dialogue just to explain what’s going on." The latter captures "the peculiar malign intensity of actual dreams."

Deirdre Barrett, a dream researcher at Harvard University, said that Nolan did not get every detail accurate regarding dreams, but their illogical, rambling, disjointed plots would not make for a great thriller anyway. However, "he did get many aspects right," she said, citing the scene in which a sleeping Cobb is shoved into a full bath, and in the dream world water gushes into the windows of the building, waking him up. "That's very much how real stimuli get incorporated, and you very often wake up right after that intrusion.".

Nolan himself said, "I tried to work that idea of manipulation and management of a conscious dream being a skill that these people have. Really the script is based on those common, very basic experiences and concepts, and where can those take you? And the only outlandish idea that the film presents, really, is the existence of a technology that allows you to enter and share the same dream as someone else."

Cinematic technique

Genre

Nolan combined elements from several different film genres into Inception, notably science fiction, heist movies, and film noir. Marion Cotillard plays "Mal" Cobb, Dom Cobb's projection of his guilt over his deceased wife's suicide. As the film's main antagonist, she is a frequent, malevolent presence in his dreams. Dom is unable to control these projections of her, challenging his abilities as an extractor. Nolan described Mal as "the essence of the femme fatale,", the key noir reference in the film. As a "classic femme fatale" her relationship with Cobb is in his mind, a manifestation of Cobb's own neurosis and fear of how little he knows about the woman he loves. DiCaprio praised Cotillard's performance saying that "she can be strong and vulnerable and hopeful and heartbreaking all in the same moment, which was perfect for all the contradictions of her character".

Nolan began with the structure of a heist movie, since exposition is an essential element of that genre, though adapted it to have a greater emotional narrative suited to the world of dreams and subconscious. Or, as Denby surmised, "the outer shell of the story is an elaborate caper". Kirstin Thompson argued that exposition was a major formal device in the film. While a traditional heist movie has a heavy dose of exposition at the beginning as the team assembles and the leader explains the plan, in Inception this becomes nearly continuous as the group progresses through the various levels of dreaming. Three-quarters of the film, until the van begins to fall from the bridge, are devoted to explaining its plot. In this way, exposition takes precedence over characterisation. Their relationships are created by their respective skills and roles. Ariadne, like her ancient namesake, creates the maze and guides the others through it, but also helps Cobb navigate his own subconscious, and as the sole student of dream-sharing, helps the audience understand the conceit of the plot.

Nolan drew inspiration from the works of Jorge Luis Borges,, the anime film Paprika (2006) by the late Satoshi Kon as an influence on the character "Ariadne", and Blade Runner (1982) by Ridley Scott.

Ending

The film cuts to the closing credits from a shot of the top wobbling ambiguously, inviting speculation about whether the final sequence was reality or another dream. Nolan confirmed that the ambiguity was deliberate, saying "I've been asked the question more times than I've ever been asked any other question about any other film I've made... What's funny to me is that people really do expect me to answer it." The film's script concludes with "Behind him, on the table, the spinning top is STILL SPINNING. And we – FADE OUT" However, Christopher Nolan also said, "I put that cut there at the end, imposing an ambiguity from outside the film. That always felt the right ending to me – it always felt like the appropriate 'kick' to me… The real point of the scene – and this is what I tell people – is that Cobb isn't looking at the top. He's looking at his kids. He's left it behind. That's the emotional significance of the thing."

In September 2010, Michael Caine, explained his interpretation of the ending, "If I'm there it's real, because I'm never in the dream. I'm the guy who invented the dream." Nolan himself noted that "I choose to believe that Cobb gets back to his kids, because I have young kids. People who have kids definitely read it differently than those who don't". He indicated that the top was not the most crucial element of the ending, saying "I've read plenty of very off-the-wall interpretations... The most important emotional thing about the top spinning at the end is that Cobb is not looking at it. He doesn't care."

Trials of Oscar Wilde

The Marquess of Queensberry's calling card with the handwritten offending inscription "For Oscar Wilde posing Somdomite [sic]"

Wilde vs Queensberry

On 18 February 1895, the Marquess left his calling card at Wilde's club, the Albemarle, inscribed: "For Oscar Wilde, posing somdomite" [sic]. Wilde, egged on by Douglas and against the advice of his friends, initiated a private prosecution against Queensberry, who was arrested on a charge of criminal libel, a charge carrying a possible sentence of up to two years in prison (Libel Act of 1843): as sodomy was then a crime, Queensberry's note amounted to a public accusation that Wilde had committed a felony.

Under the Libel Act 1843, Queensberry could avoid conviction for libel only by demonstrating that his accusation was in fact true, and furthermore that there was some "public benefit" to having made the accusation openly. Queensberry's lawyers thus hired private detectives to find evidence of Wilde's homosexual liaisons to prove the fact of the accusation. They decided on a strategy of portraying Wilde as a depraved older man who habitually enticed naive youths into a life of vicious homosexuality in order to demonstrate that there was some public interest in making the accusation openly, ostensibly to warn off other youths who might otherwise have become entrapped by Wilde.

The libel trial became a cause célèbre as salacious details of Wilde's private life with Taylor and Douglas began to appear in the press. A team of private detectives had directed Queensberry's lawyers, led by Edward Carson QC, to the world of the Victorian underground. Wilde's association with blackmailers and male prostitutes, cross-dressers and homosexual brothels was recorded, and various persons involved were interviewed, some being coerced to appear as witnesses since they too were accomplices to the crimes Wilde was accused of.

No. 34 Tite Street, Chelsea, the Wilde family home from 1884 to his arrest in 1895. In Wilde's time this was No. 16 – the houses have been renumbered.

The trial opened on 3 April 1895 amongst scenes of near hysteria both in the press and the public galleries. The extent of the evidence massed against Wilde forced him to declare meekly, "I am the prosecutor in this case". Wilde's lawyer, Sir Edward George Clarke, opened the case by pre-emptively asking Wilde about two suggestive letters Wilde had written to Douglas, which the defence had in its possession. He characterised the first as a "prose sonnet" and admitted that the "poetical language" might seem strange to the court but claimed its intent was innocent. Wilde stated that the letters had been obtained by blackmailers who had attempted to extort money from him, but he had refused, suggesting they should take the £60 offered, "unusual for a prose piece of that length". He claimed to regard the letters as works of art rather than as something to be ashamed of.

Carson cross-examined Wilde on how he perceived the moral content of his works. Wilde replied with characteristic wit and flippancy, claiming that works of art are not capable of being moral or immoral but only well or poorly made, and that only "brutes and illiterates," whose views on art "are incalculably stupid", would make such judgements about art. Carson, a leading barrister, diverged from the normal practice of asking closed questions. Carson pressed Wilde on each topic from every angle, squeezing out nuances of meaning from Wilde's answers, removing them from their aesthetic context and portraying Wilde as evasive and decadent. While Wilde won the most laughs from the court, Carson scored the most legal points. To undermine Wilde's credibility, and to justify Queensberry's description of Wilde as a "posing…somdomite", Carson drew from the witness an admission of his capacity for "posing", by demonstrating that he had lied about his age on oath. Playing on this, he returned to the topic throughout his cross-examination.

Carson then moved to the factual evidence and questioned Wilde about his acquaintances with younger, lower-class men. Wilde admitted being on a first-name basis and lavishing gifts upon them, but insisted that nothing untoward had occurred and that the men were merely good friends of his. Carson repeatedly pointed out the unusual nature of these relationships and insinuated that the men were prostitutes. Wilde replied that he did not believe in social barriers, and simply enjoyed the society of young men. Then Carson asked Wilde directly whether he had ever kissed a certain servant boy, Wilde responded, "Oh, dear no. He was a particularly plain boy – unfortunately ugly – I pitied him for it." Carson pressed him on the answer, repeatedly asking why the boy's ugliness was relevant. Wilde hesitated, then for the first time became flustered: "You sting me and insult me and try to unnerve me; and at times one says things flippantly when one ought to speak more seriously."

In his opening speech for the defence, Carson announced that he had located several male prostitutes who were to testify that they had had sex with Wilde. On the advice of his lawyers, Wilde dropped the prosecution. Queensberry was found not guilty, as the court declared that his accusation that Wilde was "posing as a Somdomite" [sic] was justified, "true in substance and in fact." Under the Libel Act 1843, Queensberry's acquittal rendered Wilde legally liable for the considerable expenses Queensberry had incurred in his defence, which left Wilde bankrupt.

The Crown vs Wilde

After Wilde left the court, a warrant for his arrest was applied for on charges of sodomy and gross indecency. Robbie Ross found Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel, Knightsbridge with Reginald Turner; both men advised Wilde to go at once to Dover and try to get a boat to France; his mother advised him to stay and fight like a man. Wilde, lapsing into inaction, could only say, "The train has gone. It's too late." Wilde was arrested for "gross indecency" under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, a term meaning homosexual acts not amounting to buggery (an offence under a separate statute). At Wilde's instruction, Ross and Wilde's butler forced their way into the bedroom and library of 16 Tite Street, packing some personal effects, manuscripts, and letters. Wilde was then imprisoned on remand at Holloway where he received daily visits from Douglas.

Wilde in the dock, from The Illustrated Police News, 4 May 1895

Events moved quickly and his prosecution opened on 26 April 1895. Wilde pleaded not guilty. He had already begged Douglas to leave London for Paris, but Douglas complained bitterly, even wanting to take the stand; however he was pressed to go and soon fled to the Hotel du Monde. Fearing persecution, Ross and many other gentlemen also left the United Kingdom during this time. Under cross examination Wilde was at first hesitant, then spoke eloquently:

Charles Gill (prosecuting): What is "the love that dare not speak its name"?

Wilde: "The love that dare not speak its name" in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art, like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as "the love that dare not speak its name," and on that account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an older and a younger man, when the older man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it, and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it.

This response was, however, counter-productive in a legal sense as it only served to reinforce the charges of homosexual behaviour. The trial ended with the jury unable to reach a verdict. Wilde's counsel, Sir Edward Clarke, was finally able to agree bail. The Reverend Stewart Headlam put up most of the £5,000 bail, having disagreed with Wilde's treatment by the press and the courts. Wilde was freed from Holloway and, shunning attention, went into hiding at the house of Ernest and Ada Leverson, two of his firm friends. Edward Carson approached Frank Lockwood QC, the Solicitor General and asked "Can we not let up on the fellow now?" Lockwood answered that he would like to do so, but feared that the case had become too politicised to be dropped.

The final trial was presided over by Mr Justice Wills. On 25 May 1895 Wilde and Alfred Taylor were convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to two years' hard labour. The judge described the sentence, the maximum allowed, as "totally inadequate for a case such as this," and that the case was "the worst case I have ever tried". Wilde's response "And I? May I say nothing, my Lord?" was drowned out in cries of "Shame" in the courtroom.

Cultural Context

Refs : Foldy and Montgomery, The Trials of Oscar Wilde 1997 and 1967

Legacy and media

Kibred

References

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