The Cinematheque

“Lady Windermere’s Fan stands as one of the great achievements of silent film, an alignment of form and feeling that grows more impressive with each viewing.”

Dave Kehr

Lady Windermere’s Fan
USA 1925
Ernst Lubitsch
88 min. DCP

Ernst Lubitsch’s version of Oscar Wilde’s play is one of the boldest literary adaptations of the silent era. Wilde’s source material is built out of a series of coy and amusing epigrams, which generalize a drama of societal judgment into delightful commentary. Lubitsch didn’t touch the text (not even for his film’s intertitles) and instead created a film where one’s ability to read a situation—for his cast of characters and audience alike—counts for everything. Lady Windermere, her husband, her extramarital suitor, and (unbeknownst to her) her disgraced mother, all possess partial insights into the other parties’ behaviour. Lubitsch applies his gifts of revelation to the life-altering action of very small differences, whether set in the bright social exposure of the racetrack or the deep, secreted shadows of a garden party. Here, the blocking and staging of glances and other silent intimations reign in ways only possible during cinema’s first decades.

Restored by The Museum of Modern Art, with the financial support of Matthew and Natalie Bernstein.

“Maybe [Lubitsch’s] best silent … Arguably one of the best films of his entire career.” Kristin Thompson

“Things are rarely exactly what they’re presented to be in a Lubitsch film—there’s always a complication, always a nuance, always another side to every story—and this tendency is at its most delicious height here, in his greatest silent film.” Kian Bergstrom, Cine-File

preceded by

I Don’t Want to Be a Man
(Ich möchte kein Mann sein)
Germany 1918
Ernst Lubitsch
45 min. DCP German intertitles with English subtitles

Legend has it that Joan of Arc and Hua Mulan adopted a male presentation to lead a nation’s military, but Ossi Oswalda takes on the task of gender performance for much more important reasons: smoking, flirting, and shaking off the moralistic gaze of the older generation in this early, amazingly contemporary mid-length feature.

“An eye-opening early comedy of sexual identity [that] showcases Lubitsch’s witty direction of actors.” Carson Lund, Harvard Film Archive

Lady Windermere’s Fan and I Don’t Want to Be a Man will each be introduced by Devan Scott.