L'éventail de Lady Windermere

Based on an Oscar Wilde,a delightful bittersweet period piece which is some kind of reductio ad aburdum that conjugal love can be the way to happiness and that you must not throw it all away.

A long flashback,where a fan sold in auction becomes the Madeleine de Proust which revives memories of long ago,when the two people who meet again after all those years return to a time when they were young and handsome.It's also a good lesson in teaching us that things are not necessarily what they seem.It is also a scathing attack on this society of snubs ,those privileged classes whose favorite pastime is putting their fellow men (and women) down.

Oscar Wilde's comedy of manners, perhaps the wittiest play ever written, is all but wrecked at the hands of a second-rate cast. Sanders is, as one would expect, casually, indolently brilliant in the role of Lord Darlington, but the rest of the cast makes the entire procedure a waste of time. Jean Crain attempts a stage accent in alternate sentences and the other members of the cast seem to believe this is a melodrama and not a comedy; indeed, the entire production has bookends that reduce it to tragedy -- doubtless the Hays office insisted. Preminger's direction seems to lie mostly in making sure that there are plenty of servants about and even the music seems banal. Stick with the visually perfect silent farce as directed by Lubitsch or even the 2004 screen version with Helen Hunt as Mrs. Erlynne; or try reading the play for the pleasure of the words. But skip this version.

Preferably before you watch this production I would urge all users to see what in my opinion is the definitive professional performance of this famous 1892 Wilde play which was televised in 1985 and which starred: Helena Little as Lady W., Tim Woodward as Lord W., Stephanie Turner as Mrs Erlynne, Kenneth Cranham as Lord Darlington and Sara Kestelman as the Duchess of Berwick.Yes all the famous quotes are there in this film:1."I can resist everything except temptation" 2."We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars"3."Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes"4."What's a cynic?"- "A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing".

Having played Lord Henry Wooton (Oscar's alter ego in "The Picture of Dorian Gray"(1946) George Sanders again assumes this mantle of giving Oscar's aphorisms another tryout playing Lord Darlington.Unless American actors are skilled at British accents (e.g.Renee Zellweger, Gwyneth Paltrow etc.), I find they grate on me as does Jeanne Crain as Lady W.Seeing Richard Greene (Robin Hood from the famous UK 1950s TV series) playing Lord W.gave me a mild shock but Martita Hunt as the Duchess of Berwick was a pleasant surprise.

I don't like Hollywood versions of classic plays as it tends to add a superficial gloss on original British productions and add lines which are not consonant with the original text.I nevertheless enjoyed this film shown in its entirety on www.youtube.com and awarded it 6/10 as I was thrilled to see Madeleine Carroll playing Mrs Erlynne who I have admired since she played the female lead in Hitchcock's "The 39 Steps" (1935).

Truncating the title and adding a little addendum of his own to the story director Otto Preminger offer's up a well polished version of Oscar Wilde's, Lady Windermere's Fan. A devastating Victorian satire in its day Preminger updates the opening to post war London with two of the now doddering principals drawn once again together over the fan re-kindling memories of when it first played such an important role in their lives.

At an auction selling objects from bombed buildings Lady Erlynne (Madeline Carroll) attempts to reclaim a fan given her decades earlier. The auctioneer is reluctant to part with it on her say so unless she can find a witness. She goes and looks up "cad from the past" Lord Darlington (George Sanders) to vouch for her and after an initial re-buff the two recall the bell époque together and how his deviousness almost ended a marriage while her sacrifice saved it.

Preminger seamlessly injects the war as a catalyst to springboard the play as well as add a sly touch that reveals itself comically at the end. With his ability to speak film language as well as anyone The Fan flows with long takes and fine performances by the principals Carroll, Jean Crain, Richard Greene and George Sanders who seemed born to play Wilde characters.

The Fan is one well crafted work that Preminger elevates by eschewing the easy task of filming a classic stage satire and adding a stark but unobtrusive contemporary sub plot that not only advances the storyline but in the true spirit of Wilde pays homage to his timeless words.

The story of "Lady Windemere's Fan" is a touching portrait of repression and hypocrisy in England during the Victorian era. The pivotal character in the movie is the charming, mysterious wise and beautiful middle-age woman played by Madeleine Carroll, who returns to the conservative upper-class milieu that had banished and rejected her decades ago. She manages to come to terms with the most delicate and unresolved aspects of her past, but she has to pay a very high price for that. Nevertheless, she is a survivor and in her eighties she will be able to make a balance and reflect on that crucial episode of her past. Madeleine Carroll and George Sanders are perfectly cast as the middle-age charmers and schemers, and also sound believable as the frail but smart octogenarian survivors, and deliver great performances on the hands of Preminger, who is able to maintain a good rhythm and to capture what we might figure is the Victorian society's aristocratic milieu of gossips and intrigues. I also enjoyed Martita Hunt as a typical upper-class eccentric, manipulative and witty matron; and thought that both Richard Greene and Jeanne Crain were OK as the younger Windemere couple. I think that this underrated little gem deserves a wider distribution. I am very lucky that in Spain the DVD of "The Fan" has been released in September 2007.