The importance of adapting plays: Stuart Burge's film on Oscar Wilde's "The importance of being earnest"

This essay is an attempt to tackle some of the fundamental issues related with the ontological differences between drama and film, namely the ability of the former to represent action and the aim of the second to relate sequential events. Through the use of some examples selected from the film adaptations of Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest our aim is to confront some of the topics distinguishing these two forms of art: pastness versus presentness, dramatic collision versus sequentiality, mimesis versus narrativity, representation versus showing.