The Importance of Being Earnest does not pretend to be anything it is not-it is the perfect adaptation of a stage play to the screen, and it knows it. Camerawork (in Technicolor) that makes itself as inconspicuous yet essential as a cucumber sandwich, brilliant casting, and costumes that are in themselves salient epigrams all serve the dialogue which is the first and last word in witty repartee. Written in 1895, Wilde's satire of Victorian manners is a thoroughly modern exploration of identity, and the importance of having an extra one, which is something Wilde knew about. Jack (Michael Redgrave) and Algernon (Michael Dennison) will Earnestly play to the sexual (not precisely social) fixation of two ladies on their names, while Miss Prism (Margaret Rutherford) and Lady Bracknell (Dame Edith Evans) enjoy pretending that it's about breeding (with three r's). But, really, what could be more 20th C. than the freedom that comes when one's transience is foretold, having begun life in a terminus?