Lady Windermere's Fan

Director: Ernst Lubitsch

1925 / 120min / DCP

Rather than render the bountiful epigrams of Oscar Wilde’s 1892 four-act stage comedy of the same name as an avalanche of silent film intertitles, Lubitsch “replace[d] witticisms with glances” [New York Review of Books] in his screen adaptation, to create a comedy both distinctly cinematic and, in its own way, entirely true to its source in its deft skewering of the pretensions of Mayfair’s upper crust. May McAvoy, seen the previous year in Lubitsch’s Three Women, has the title role as the wife of an English lord whose sheltered existence is turned upside down when she’s forced to make agonizing decisions concerning the optimal seating chart for a forthcoming dinner party, guests including suave, on-the-prowl bachelor Ronald Colman and Irene Rich’s “notorious” blackmail-minded Mrs. Erlynne, both bringing heaps of trouble in their wakes.

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

Live piano accompaniment by Makia Matsamura on Sunday, December 14th