A Man of No Importance

The title of the film A Man of No Importance plays on its similarity to the title of Oscar Wilde's successful comedy "The Importance of Being Earnest". For the protagonist, the roughly 60-year-old bus conductor Alfie, is a great Oscar Wilde fan who in his spare time stages Wilde plays with his own passengers as actors.

Like "The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne", this film is also set in Dublin, but we have moved a few years on. Prudishness and moral outrage are also present on a large scale in A Man of No Importance, but the tone is somewhat lighter. We are dealing with a serious comedy that might have been better had it been even more serious or a great deal funnier.

Albert Finney is delightful as Alfie, who is in the process of realising his dream of staging Wilde's "Salome", a play that the butcher Carney, who usually plays a leading role, finds rather too risqué. The others in the amateur theatre troupe, however, are Alfie's loyal supporters. One of the newcomers is the lovely Adele Rice, whom Alfie wants in the title role of Salome. Alfie's sister Lily soon sees her chance to try to pair off the still unmarried Alfie with Adele. No one has yet grasped what is up with Alfie, not even when he calls his handsome young colleague, the bus driver Robbie, Bosie. When Alfie finally comes clean, there is naturally a scandal, but unlike the people in Judith Hearne's world, Alfie's circle is on the whole far more tolerant and understanding.