AN IDEAL HUSBAND: I'm not Wilde about this

Oscar Wilde was a brilliant playwright with a biting wit and a brilliant way with words, but you wouldn't know that if all you had to go on was this 1947 British version of his 1895 stage play AN IDEAL HUSBAND.
For much of the running time the cast are swamped by the garish Technicolor and drowned out by the insistent classical muzak score, but that's not an entirely bad thing because in the moments when it's quiet enough to hear them speak it's obvious that none of them are up to the task of delivering Wilde's words in an amusing or convincing way.
Imported American star Paulette Goddard is well out of her depth as the seductive and scheming Mrs Cheveley, and Hugh Williams as the target of her machinations is so dull that it's impossible to evoke any sympathy for his plight. Diana Wynyard just looks bored with the whole affair while Michael Wilding should have sued cameraman Georges Perinal for shooting him exclusively from angles so bad that he reduces the dashing matinee idol to a collection of sharp angles clinging to an enormous nose.
Perhaps director Alexander Korda was so distracted by his efforts to cram as many different bright colours as possible into every frame of film that he didn't notice the dismal performances being delivered by his cast. Not even the venerable Sir C Aubrey Smith in his penultimate role can save this flop.
Utterly undistinguished on every level, my advice is to give this film a very wide berth and watch the 1999 version with Rupert Everett and Julianne Moore instead.