Lady Windermere's Fan. 1925. Directed by Ernst Lubitsch.

(8/3/01)

[Note: I saw this film on June 30 and it is now August. I am just going to make some brief notes about it.]

Lady Windermere's Fan is consistently interesting from beginning to end. The characters are all interesting. It is a sophisticated film--which is exactly what one would expect from Lubitsch.

It was kind of unsettling to see Ronald Colman playing a rake. This is no reflection on Colman's acting, but is because he later established a screen character of a noble gentleman. This is an example of a film becoming a little bit less successful because of what came later.

It was pointed out in the notes to the screening that in making a silent film of an Oscar Wilde play Lubitsch had to sacrifice Wilde's witty dialogue, but replaced it with his own visual wit. The primary example which caught my attention was the way he characterizes the changing status of a relationship by the way the man knocks at the woman's door. This seems to be a Lubitsch touch. What this really shows--to me--is that the story of Lady Windermere's Fan lends itself to wit and Lubitsch didn't need Wilde's because he was quite capable himself in that department. It also shows what a good tale-spinner Wilde was, in that he could write a play that didn't need to rely on his own dialogue--memorable as that was--to be successful.

I am not going to go into the story of Lady Windermere's Fan except to say that the point of its social criticism that had an impact on me was that this was a social milieu that absolutely depended on lies and deceit. Lady Windermere never discovers that the woman her husband has been paying off is her mother and the mother insists that she never tell her husband the true facts of how she nearly ran off with Ronald Colman's character. Relationships are inauthentic. It may be a comedy, but it has a very bitter undercurrent indeed.

I found the character of Lady Windermere's mother very interesting, even if I can't remember her name. This is a woman who sees the situation exactly as it is and works it for her own ends. She is human and she prevails. She is a survivor. I wonder if she really thought she was sacrificing her own future for her daughter--though I believe she would have--or if she knew all along that she would come out on top. A nice note of ambiguity at the end of a very nice adaptation of a classic play.