Lady Windermere’s Fan

#10 in my ranking of Ernst Lubitsch’s filmography.

I think Lady Windermere’s Fan is one of the key silent films of Ernst Lubitsch. Not because I like it (I like it a lot) but because of what it means for Lubitsch and the kinds of movies he obviously wanted to make. It’s an adaptation of the play by Oscar Wilde, and it’s a silent film. Do you adapt Oscar Wilde into silent films? Isn’t the point of an Oscar Wilde play the witty banter? Well, Lubitsch and his main writer Julien Josephson approached this adaptation knowing full well that they weren’t going to be able to capture much, if any, of that banter, and they actually adapted the material for the medium of silent film. Approaching it primarily as a character piece, they found a surprising amount of emotion to mine and effectively brought it to the screen.

Lady Windermere (May McAvoy) is happily married to her husband Lord Windermere (Bert Lytell) despite the unwanted advances of Lord Darlington (Ronald Colman), a young bachelor with designs on the married woman. This is a minor issue compared to the threat of scandal when an older woman, Mrs. Erlynne (Irene Rich) shows up with proof that she is Lady Windermere’s mother, a woman the young bride thought had been dead since she was a child. In order to protect his wife’s perception of her own mother, instead of the scandalous nature of the real woman who showed up in London one day, Lord Windermere decides to buy her off with regular payments of fifteen hundred pounds at a time.

This money allows Mrs. Erlynne to establish herself unsteadily in London society. She may be a married woman of questionable virtue untied to any man and with unexplained wealth, but she has the wealth and can show up at public events like horse races no matter what the nattering group of gossips say. The gossips, a trio of elderly women, is the main source of comic relief in the film. They have two major appearances, the first at the horse race and the second at Lady Windermere’s birthday party, and Lubitsch frames them in such entertaining fashion that they are just outright funny every time they come on screen. The trio of women may be unserious ninnies, but they do represent the opinion of society, and Mrs. Erlynne cannot fully establish herself or even fully accept the romantic interests of the bachelor Lord Augustus Lorton (Edward Martindel) if society doesn’t embrace her as one of their own.

The main tension in the film is around the secretive nature of the relationship between Lord Windermere and Mrs. Erlynne. He’s funding her, taking taxis to get to her residence, and showing every sign that he’s having an affair with the woman, signs that Lady Windermere steadily picks up on, her suspicions growing as her birthday party comes closer. When Mrs. Erlynne insists on being invited to Lady Windermere’s birthday party with the plan on revealing herself to her daughter, Lord Windermere accepts but has to rescind the invitation when his wife finds out. Mrs. Erlynne refuses to accept the declination and shows up anyway, showing herself to be a witty and comfortable entry into London high society (this is the one place where I miss the Wilde dialogue the most), despite Lady Windermere’s threats to her husband to slap Mrs. Erlynne across the face with her fan.

The ending of the film involves all of our main characters, after the party, descending at different times into a single, scandalous location. My most consistent complaint about Lubitsch’s lesser endings has been how quickly they happen, how quickly everything gets wrapped up and, often, end up with clashing tones that he doesn’t manage all that well. That’s absent completely here as the last twenty minutes are completely dedicated to wrapping up the story in a juggle of characters and their motives, changing emotions, and even some solid hints of irony. It’s also a source of unexpected pathos as Mrs. Erlynn’s reasons for her disappearance get a final act explanation previously denied to us, but rather perfectly placed for where it needs to be in order to draw parallels with herself and her daughter about to, perhaps, jump into some rash action.

Now, let me talk about intertitles for a second. Intertitles were the single major flaw of silent films. Silent films hinge on visuals and montage to convey information, and breaking that up with a black screen with text on it is a breaking up of the magic that is pure cinema. Most of the best silent films have minimal intertitles (think The Passion of Joan of Arc or Sunrise), trusting on the audience to pick up most of the information while designing the film to be told in the specific ways that silent film was strong doing. This is why I was surprised at both Lubitsch adapting an Oscar Wilde play as well as how well it comes off. We don’t get much of the wittiness of the original play in terms of dialogue, but the emotional core of the story is retained. We also find new ways to be funny that don’t rely on talking, in particular around the presentation of the three gossips. The wit hasn’t been removed, but it has been modified to fit the form. It’s an intelligent adaptation that works quite well.

That being said, I do think the film loses a bit of something in not having the witty dialogue present. Characters are well built here, but it’s obvious that there’s more entertainment to be had if people were actually exchanging witticisms back and forth. It’s my only real complaint, that while the adaptation is done well, it can’t quite completely overcome what’s in the original through its best efforts. The film has to rely on its ability to create characters and situations the silent-film way, and it does those very well. That issue is only really an issue, I think, through the first hour or so. It doesn’t make anything bad, but there’s a certain distance in the first hour that prevents some direct connection with the characters.

However, the ending is great, and I love it.

This is Lubitsch’s best film so far in his career. That it falls just shy of greatness is a tad disappointing, but he really did the best with what he had.

Rating: 3.5/4