Lady Windermere's Fan
Capsule by Don Druker
From the Chicago Reader

One of Ernst Lubitsch's greatest accomplishments, this 1925 filming of the Oscar Wilde classic neatly synthesizes the best elements of silent comedy and melodrama without ever falling into either trivia or heavy-handedness. Lubitsch expertly juggles sexual desire, social proprieties, and financial realities so that what emerges is a Schnitzler-esque study of moral sham and the reasons for it. Here is the American film that, along with Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise, most nearly approaches the comic sensibility of Renoir's The Rules of the Game. 89 min.

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