Wilde the movie

Last evening I watched again the 1997 film, "Wilde," directed by Brian Gilbert and starring Stephen Fry as Oscar, Jude Law as Lord Alfred Douglas ("Bosie") (1870-1945), and Tom Wilkinson as the latter's father, the Marquis of Queensberry. I found it even harder to watch or enjoy than the first time, likely because I know more now about Wilde's submissive participation with Bosie in his own undoing—and also, perhaps, because there were more scenes of homosexual sodomy than I recalled the film's having. Bosie was no more forgivable for being portrayed prettily by Law, although Wilde may have been even more pitiful for Fry's pathetic portrayal.
    Most interesting, actually, was this time recognizing the Welsh actor Ioan Gruffudd, whose portrayal of William Wilberforce (1759-1833) in the 2006 film, "Amazing Grace," I'd watched the night before (and whose portrayal of Horatio Hornblower we enjoyed months ago in the TV series). In "Wilde," he plays John Gray, whom Frank Harris described as having "not only great personal distinction, but charming manners and a marked poetic gift, a much greater gift than Oscar possessed." Harris identified Gray as the likely source for the last name of the title character in Wilde's novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Remember, Harris knew the people involved; he was Wilde's junior by only sixteen months.
    From the blurb at the bottom of the front cover of Frank Harris's life of Wilde ("Now a major motion picture starring Stephen Fry"—see the cover photo on Thursday's post), I was expecting to see that the film was based on the book. Not so, alas; it was said to be based on Richard Ellmann's biography (which I've had for years but not read yet).
    Ellmann (1918-1987) is said in the introduction to Harris's book (by Wilde's grandson, Merlin Holland, copyright 1997) to have distanced himself from Harris's account:

Such, though, is Harris's reputation that even modern biographers are often reluctant to quote him. Harris in Chapter 4 tells the story of the famous Wilde/Whistler exchange culminating in Whistler's "You will, Oscar, you will." Hesketh Pearson's 1946 biography repeats the incident word for word and Richard Ellmann quotes it in his 1987 biography of Wilde, but gives Pearson as the source rather than the generally discredited Harris....[p. ix, Oscar Wilde]

I note, however, that Ellmann gave Harris almost half a column in his index, with over thirty references.