Search This Blog

Saturday, October 25, 2014

Lady Windermere's Fan (1925)

Yes, I am still watching Ernst Lubitsch films.  This one is a silent film based on the Oscar Wilde play of the same name (the play was also the basis for the 2004 movie, "A Good Woman" with Helen Hunt and Scarlet Johanssen).  The play is just what you would expect from Wilde, a witty reparte that appears to be one thing but is slyly critical of all sorts of things underneath the text.

So how to make a movie without words and few intertitles that is true to the play for which it is named?  This movie demonstrates the genius of Lubitsch at it's best. The play is a mere 50 odd pages and it is well worth reading it before pulling the movie up on YouTube and comparing them.  The movie is visually witty and entirely true to the story, which is about a woman who thinks her husband is cheating on her but he is not.  The best character is Mrs. Erlynne, who is the object of much gossip with very little fact underlying it.  The play depicts this verbally, but the movie is pitch perfect in displaying it visually.  I loved them both, and as a pair they are the best advertisement for the artisitc ability of a silent film.

No comments:

Post a Comment