Lady Windermere's Fan (1925)
On the eve of her birthday ball, Lady Windermere comes to suspect her husband of an affair with the mysterious Mrs. Erlynne, unaware that Mrs. Erlynne is in fact her own estranged mother, quietly working to protect her from scandal and a ruinous mistake of her own.
Lady Windermere’s Fan adapts Oscar Wilde’s play with almost none of his dialogue on screen, Ernst Lubitsch instead trusting gesture, glances, and social choreography to carry the wit — a defining early demonstration of what critics came to call the “Lubitsch touch.”
Background
Lady Windermere’s Fan adapts Oscar Wilde’s 1892 play and was directed by Ernst Lubitsch for Warner Bros. It became a defining early example of what critics called the ‘Lubitsch touch’. Ronald Colman, May McAvoy and Irene Rich appear in the cast. Lubitsch kept very little of Wilde’s dialogue on screen, relying instead on gesture, glances and social choreography to carry the film’s wit. The story was reshaped for the silent screen, which made the play’s sharp social observations more visual.
What to watch for
The plot turns on Mrs. Erlynne’s mysterious presence at the birthday ball, a suspicion that Lubitsch builds through the social circle rather than through explanation. Watch for the way he stages the group, with glances and small movements carrying the subtext that Wilde would have expressed in dialogue. The ending, in which a woman gives up her place in society for her daughter’s sake, is handled with the same economy that makes the film’s comedy feel controlled. The result rewards attention to small gestures as much as to the plot.
