The Importance of Being Earnest

(J. Arthur Rank; Universal-International), bringing Oscar Wilde's classic 1895 comedy of manners to the screen for the first time, is a highly stylized, dryly amusing production. The British-made film is faithful to Wilde's play, which is a triumph of triviality: Playboy Jack Worthing (Michael Redgrave) loves Gwendolen Fairfax (Joan Greenwood), whose cousin, Algernon Moncrieff (Michael Denison), loves Jack's ward, Cecily Cardew (Dorothy Tutin). But because of Jack's ignoble habit of representing himself as his imaginary brother Earnest and Algy's adoption of Earnest's name and wicked reputation to speed his courtship of Cecily, both girls believe them selves to be engaged to the nonexistent Earnest until this pleasant deception is cleared up in a splendid barrage of turn-of-the-century epigrams.

Adapter-Director Anthony (Pygmalion} Asquith has given a studiedly high tone to Wilde's comedy by staging it with a straight face and a grand air. There are richly Technicolored sets and costumes.

The dialogue also gets pretty rich at times as the various characters stop dead in their tracks to declaim theatrically to the camera (to point up the artificiality, the picture opens and closes, like a stage play, with a stage curtain).

The juvenile leads are handsome and debonair, while Dame Edith Evans makes a formidable Lady Bracknell and Mar garet Rutherford a comical Miss Prism.

But still stealing the show are Wilde's lines, e.g., "I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train."

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