Movies: “Lady Windermere’s Fan”
Restored print of 1925 Lubitsch film shown at Turner Classic Movies Festival in Hollywood
Ernst Lubitsch’s version of Oscar Wilde’s first play, Lady Windermere’s Fan, makes a rational man want to read the play. This is the mark of a great movie. The concise Warner Bros. film, restored by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City with financing from Matthew and Natalie Bernstein, features an excellent cast and sets.
The silent 1925 movie depicts the selfish mother created by a British author who was persecuted, prosecuted and jailed for being gay. Indeed, Wilde’s sexuality undergirds every scene and theme of Lady Windermere’s Fan, which begins as a deft dramatization—it’s often reduced to “a comedy of manners”—of the parasitic socialite. Lubitsch, renowned for lightness, celebrates loyalty in selfish love. It’s made possible by the wit, warmth and intelligence of its gay author.
The story begins on the eve of a dinner with the hostess in solitude—within the privacy of her home, thoughts and emotions—as she sorts through proper seating arrangement of guests at a dinner party. In a fleeting, telling moment, the hostess hesitates about where to put a guest for whom she harbors some degree of affection. She centers herself just as she puts the guest’s name aside for deeper thought because she’s interrupted by a visitor who happens to be the man for whom she may or may not carry a romantic torch. Excitement begins as the plot thickens. This is the world of Ernst Lubitsch, whose ability to capture playfulness in love is on display.
I watched Lady Windermere’s Fan on closing night of the 2026 Turner Classic Movies Classic Film Festival in Hollywood at Sid Grauman’s Egyptian Theater on Sunset Boulevard. Grauman’s Egyptian is now owned by Netflix and operated by American Cinematheque.
Lady Windermere’s Fan strengthens as it extends. The film’s silence stimulates one’s senses, though TCM’s screening was accompanied by musicians, including a violinist, a cellist and a pianist, among others. The musical accompaniment was exquisite. It’s the best I’ve experienced; simply perfect.
In a successive series of character arcs spun from that original setup between the lovely, alluring hostess and wife (May McAvoy) and the man who exhibits his love and desire for her, Lady Windermere’s Fan continues to provoke thought, making you wonder how the title will work itself out. Again, this traces to Oscar Wilde, whose sensibility and sensitivity as a man who loves men lets the whole story come into sharp focus while keeping the wider scope of an earned, lifelong wisdom.
Among the characters is the husband, Lord Windermere (Bert Lytell), a decent, goodlooking fellow who’s not as dashing as Ronald Colman’s Lord Darlington, who never lets up pursuing Lady Windermere. Complicity when the threesome are in proximity adds a layer of complexity. With ladies longing in love, displaying tension in conflict on a loveseat, the action begins with intrigue in a playful blend of solemnity, naughtiness and a woman on the brink of despair.
The plot goes into higher register with a horse racing segment as Wilde’s delicious takedown of the parasitism, fraud and collectivism of the predominant personality type of the last 100 years takes center stage at a racetrack. This place of gambling, racing and speculation allows Lubitsch to showcase hatted old biddies, the most wicked characters in the film. The segment closes with a playful chase as a randy old man goes after a beautiful younger woman who, it’s revealed relatively early, is Lady Windermere’s long-lost mother, unbeknownst to everyone, particularly Lady Windermere. Social outcast Mrs. Erlynne (Irene Rich in a stunning performance) cuts a smart social figure who seeks to be redeemed by enlisting someone in a position to advance her cause: Lord Windermere.
But this mother’s tale, unlike Stella Dallas, Mildred Pierce, Beaches and dozens of stereotypical Hollywood pictures glorifying the altruistic mother and sacrifice as the highest virtue, proceeds as a tribute to the selfish woman as ideal mother. Margaret Windermere’s mother pursues her values with loyalty, strength and vitality. Mother’s is a vigorous pursuit as she navigates an older suitor, a skeptical son-in-law and an unknowing daughter who stumbles upon her husband’s connection to this beautiful woman rejected by the social set and lusted after by aristocratic men. Incited by Lord Darlington, the lady daughter may jump to a wrong conclusion.
You might think you can suppose where plot twists lead and you’re likely to be surprised. Don’t be fooled by Lubitsch‘s legendary lightness. To achieve the effect for which he became famous, he needs to honor the literature of its author, Oscar Wilde. Lubitsch gently etches the gay man’s sexual insight into Lady Windermere’s Fan. This leaves the audience free to learn the source—and discover the soft, materialistic brilliance—of the movie’s title.
Fundamentally, this movie reveres trusting yourself—through forging a mother-daughter or parent-child bond. What’s depicted is as applicable to the father and son (or the father and daughter or mother and son) as it adheres to mother and daughter. As Mother reacts by striking matches and lighting cigarettes at the prospect of social stigma and rejection, Daughter turns to seated solitude to figure what to do next.
Nothing conflicted is depicted as easy, light and gay. Contrary to reputations of Oscar Wilde and Ernst Lubitsch, everything boils and scalds male and female parasites; their collectivism is thoroughly depicted, even as it’s renounced on the movie’s terms.
Trusting your judgment as a woman wasn’t easy in 1925. It isn’t easy now—for anyone—and what happens to each character in their longing for love and redemption is memorable, enjoyable and gently fabulous.
Lady Windermere’s Fan is not a romp. Mindfully watch the mother character to learn. Before the lights go dim and you prepare to resume your life after feeling the gentle refreshment of Lady Windermere’s Fan, surely behold and enjoy its lessons. But notice the role of the rational woman who pursues her values—her highest values—as she refines herself for her own sake. This is the lesson of what the material possession in the title can do for you. This is what it means to become your own fan—to wave a fan—to love yourself, to pursue your happiness and to spare, by living in, this world.
If you can watch this movie on Mother’s Day—in today’s culture of overpromised technology that’s supposed to make everything available and instead makes everything a hassle with rote notifications, prompts, logins and vanished, removed content, endeavor to do so. Even if you have to go to the library and inquire about streaming or a DVD. I don’t know what you’ll have to do to see this movie, but, if you can, see it in a movie theater—a grand, opulent movie theater, if possible—while you can, while it’s legal, before Netflix and other bean counters ruin the experience they claim to want to retain—and hurry before it’s gone. This is the first movie about a mother with an ego whose child deserves her love I can recall seeing in the movie theater. That it was made 101 years ago (and written and staged long before that) ought to awaken and embolden you.
Relish the feeling of the finish as Lady Windermere’s Fan, without belaboring motherhood, lifts you into revitalizing light.