2 and ½? Three Women (1924)

 

This posting is late, for which I can only apologise, but I found myself in crisis and desperate to see the restored version of the film Lubitsch made directly after it, Forbidden Paradise (1924) only to discover, from reading this very blog, that I’d seen it in 2018. In the cut and thrust of silent film watching these things can happen, an overdose of Ruritanian comedies, too much Pola (is that even possible?) and perhaps a Touch of the Lubitsch’s can all contribute but you never lose that Lubitsch Feeling which is why his extremely coherent body of work can confuse your random-access memory?

 

I was pointed towards Forbidden Paradise after reading the director’s biographer Joseph McBride* on this run of early Hollywood films. He is disappointed in Three Women in comparison with the more experimental and engaging film that followed it, Ernst’s third in his first full year in America and fourth overall after starting with Rosita in 1923. McBride notes “intermittent felicities…” but marks down Three Women’s “clumsy construction, uncertainty of tone and lack of inspiration…” in comparison to the excellence of The Marriage Circle, the first of the 1924 hattrick.

 

Watching this good-looking release on the Kino-Lorber Blu-ray I wouldn’t have expected to agree with most of these sentiments based on the pacey and touch-filled opening sequences but the narrative does lose its way and we also get precious little screen time for the third woman, Marie Prevost whose presence does lift the last third of the film, it’s just a shame she isn’t given more to do. This is a Lubitsch though and it’s like a rushed early Beatles album or an off-colour Vermeer; it’s still very good and entertaining.

Pauline Frederick

Based on the 1914 novel Lillis Ehe (Lilli's Marriage) by Yolande Maree (originally Iolanthe Marès) part of a popular series of “moral” novels set in the Berlin demimonde and clearly appealing to Lubitsch’s interest in the compromised classes. Here there is bad behaviour amongst the civilised high society now relocated to New York City, as human frailty feeds human greed and innocence is taken advantage of and corrupted by the dishonest and cruel although one wonders how Lew Cody can’t be spotted a mile off so slight are his charms in comparison to say Adolphe Menjou?

 

Anyway… what we do have going for this film is the formidable Pauline Frederick as Mrs. Mabel Wilton and the film kicks off with her character carefully weighing herself on the scales against a stark black backdrop which allows us to focus on her ongoing concerns about getting old… a proto-Smouldering Fires moment for the fabulous-looking 40-year-old. Still, it’s how you’re made to feel and especially by a society that favours sheen over substance.

 

Have you any idea how much wealth is represented by that woman you have just held in your arms?

 

Mabel attends a vast charity ball for the Eastern Red Cross Committee at a “Waldorf Astoria” impressively designed and choreographed by Lubitsch complete with slides, merry-go-rounds and jollity on a grand scale. An eye-catching attendee is penniless but for some reason desirable Edmund Lamont (Lew Cody) who dodges his creditors and makes a beeline for Mabel after helping her off the slide and being advised by his pal/also creditor Harvey (Willard Louis) about her three-million-dollar fortune.

 

Lew Cody

Cue some “touches” as the $tar-struck Edmund looks on Mabel’s jewellery, focusing item by item as Lubitsch reveals his heart’s desire even as he begins the process of seducing his target. There are pretty young women all around him but he only has eyes for Mabel’s diamond necklace, gold rings and dazzling bracelet. Gradually the images run together and it’s all Edmund can do to stop himself from fainting. Greed! He offers her a nightcap and accompanied by Harvey, who acts as a somnambulant chaperone after polishing off all the chocolates – another trademark visual ellipse - the three head to Mabel’s home. Her ardour is finally cooled by a letter from her daughter Jeanne (May McAvoy) who reminds her that she’ll be 18 in a few days… her mother suddenly feels very old and stares at the mirror.

 

So far so good, and there are a lot of delicious moments at Jeanne’s party in Berkeley, California as lovelorn Fred Armstrong (Pierre Gendron) tries to find the right moment to give his sweetheart the $500 bracelet he’s had to pawn his watch for and pledge his troth. His progress to this goal is interrupted and thwarted by split-second misfortunes as Lubitsch plays out a dance of frustration with said watch repeatedly being pulled from and returned to Fred’s pocket… as his last chance is lost when she opens her mother’s present of a diamond bracelet.

 

Why have you come without my permission?

 

Her mother’s present depresses Jeanne with its crass over-compensation for lack of attention and even when she returns home she’s unwelcomed by Mabel who is far too busy being romanced by the man who she’s just gifted $100,000 for sure-fire investments to. This inattention soon becomes heavily ironic when, after saying she was too busy to spend time with Jeanne, Lamont also makes his excuses and sees the daughter instead. As Mabel mopes alone at home, Harvey spots his pal with a younger woman at a nightclub only to realise that it was Jeanne the next day whereupon he informs Lamont of the daughter’s worth as the betrayals mount up.

 

May McAvoy and Pierre Gendron

Now, there are various ways this could all play out and this is where the story diverges from could have been a more satisfying and believable analysis of mother-daughter relationships, faithless gold-diggers and their good-hearted molls – Marie Prevost could have rescued things – but this descend into unlikely melodrama.

 

Frederick and McAvoy give things a good shot and what we do see of Prevost is, of course, eye-catching, but it was still early days for Lubitsch in this new environment and a lot more was in store.

 

Back to Lew Cody… he does his best but he doesn’t quite convince as sophisticated enough to win the affections of either let alone both women, and I’m quite sure Marie Prevost’s character would have him exactly where she wanted him. All this said, Cody has his own style and was apparently a great raconteur, highly popular, a pal of Buster’s and the husband to be of Mabel Normand. Given a better scenario his character and its arc could have been much more compelling.

 

Three Women is still well worth watching though and I would love to see it on the big screen as opposed to just the splendid Kino-Lorber Blu-ray which comes with a stirring new score from Andrew Earle Simpson and an excellent commentary track from Anthony Slide.

 

It’s available direct from Kino or other online retailers selling US worldwide.

Marie Prevost abides...

 *How Did Lubitsch Do It? by Joseph Mcbride (2018, Columbia University Press) Buy it on Amazon!!

The old magic remains... The Enchanted Cottage (1924), Edward Lorusso Kickstarter No. 26

"To anyone with a poetic soul, this picture will be a rare treat. But the too literal person will be sadly disappointed. A picture for folk who dare to dream. As such we cannot recommend it too highly."

Photoplay, June 1924 (see below)

 

This is a fascinating film on so many levels and I’m not surprised Edward Lorusso chose it as his 26^th Kickstarter Project and that he aimed for a specially written score from the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra for this Blu-ray presentation. It’s a tale of post-war angst and redemption that for all the accusations of melodrama does indeed address the very real issues for those of the audience who did not look like movie stars or who were disabled, injured during the Great War as were an estimated six million British and German soldiers alone.

 

It's also rare to see two leading stars, in this case, Richard Barthelmess and May McAvoy, and who aren’t called Lon Chaney, playing disfigured versions of themselves in romantic leading roles. Barthelmess plays former British officer Oliver Bashforth who was so badly injured his body is twisted out of shape whilst McAvoy has false teeth to play the “plain” Laura Pennington a challenge to the prevailing demand of Hollywood to portray the most beautiful people in the most beautiful of ways. Both give of their best and their performances elevate what is a slight story to levels of poignancy that still resonate.

 

Ed made a 4k scan of the Library of Congress’ 35mm print, perhaps the only surviving copy on this stock, which had oddly been copied onto stock containing the music track from another film. He cropped the music off and makes the most of what is a pretty decent print to which he added new opening credits which fit very well with the style of Gertrude Chase’s intertitles. The result also highlights Livingston Platt’s gorgeous designs of the titular cottage, enabling us to feel anew the romantic and possibly even supernatural properties of this space.

Richard Barthelmess

The film was based on the 1923 play by Arthur Wing Pinero who was also impressed by this design. His story echoed others of the time in its desire for damaged people to be made somehow whole again by romantic love or dreams coming true against all reason. You can understand why such stories were popular after the war and the flu pandemic and there are so many works of fiction reflecting this. Lorusso quotes Testament of Youth, the memoir of British nurse and activist Vera Brittain, whilst at the time there were comparisons with JM Barrie’s supernatural Mary Rose which had its premiere in 1920. Pinero was aiming more for the redemption through love of Barrie’s Sentimental Tommy, written in 1896 and made into a film, now lost, in 1921.

 

Directed by John S. Robertson with a scenario from Josephine Lovett the film hedges its bets on the supernatural elements of the “enchantment” and you can just as easily read it as a tale of two people who find themselves against all odds in terms of class, physicality and looks.

 

Soul and body awry, Oliver sought out the pain of his own reflection…

 

We find Oliver Bashforth wounded and miserable still trying to fit in with the rather shallow lives of his upper-class family and friends… The stiff upper lip is much in evidence from his father whilst his mother is caring if trapped in her circumstances whilst his sister Ethel – a spirited turn from Florence Short – just thinks he should shake himself out of it, a mindset very much still prevalent among the conservative British classes. In modern parlance, The Enchanted Cottage is something of a treatise on PTSD or “shell shock” as it used to be called at this time and as explored in Pat Barker’s exceptional Regeneration Trilogy. Whatever the changes to Oliver’s perceived reality during the film, he recognises his crisis which, for psychiatrist W. H. R. Rivers, who pioneered treatments of post-traumatic stress and is one of Barker’s subjects, is part of the road to wellness.

May McAvoy, yes, really...

At the start though Oliver forces himself to release his fiancée after she has quite clearly fallen for his able-bodied pal. Heartbroken, he goes to hide himself away at a remote country cottage, downsizing his status along with his outlook on life and possibility. His only companion is housekeeper Mrs. Minnett (Ethel Wright) who, an intertitle notes, is possessed of the uncanny intuition sometimes found in simple folk. That condescending sentence may well hit the nail on the head.

 

Into Oliver’s darkened misery floats the sounds of children playing and to his dismay he finds that his poisoned reverie has been introduced by the simple honesty of the plain and lonely governess Laura Pennington (McAvoy) along with her friend Major Hillgrove (Holmes Herbert) who is blind and can therefore only hear the truth around him with the aid of the classic cinematic trope insisting that losing one sense enhances those that remain… but why not?

 

The text is pretty brutal and hard to read but there’s no doubt that Laura may well be a wonderful human being but she is “hopelessly plain but… dependable…” and that reliability is of tremendous value with, “… plain women the bricks of the World.” McAvoy’s extra teeth and extended nose can’t hide her glowing eyes though and she’s clearly enjoying this role. She pretty quickly bursts Oliver’s misery bubble and explains that he’s living in Honeymoon Cottage, for three centuries a go-to destination for newly married good folk.

 

Father and Ethel (Florence Short)

With his sister Ethel offering to come to the cottage and look after him, Oliver gets desperate and hatches a plan to marry his new – plain – friend so that they can be left alone. McAvoy is great value here, portraying her character’s heart breaking a-new as this man whom she’d come to love sees her only as a device. But strange things begin to happen after they are wed and the ghosts of honeymooners past float through the rooms of the cottage, possibly visible to Laura and Oliver but certainly palpable in spirit.

 

All I see Laura, is your unselfishness – your tenderness – how blind I’ve been you are beautiful!

 

Sooner or later, the inevitable happens and the two realise that they are in love but is this a supernatural or even Christian moment or are they, and the audience, now seeing their idealised versions, a hale and hearty Barthelmess and a beautiful McAvoy. There’s only one way to find out, call in Oliver’s family to meet the new bride and put their closeted romance to the test…

 

The spirits of romance?

The Enchanted Cottage is a sweet film and it makes some brave decisions for the time allowing both those wonderful leads to express its emotive content to the full. I doubt there was a dry eye by the end in 1924 and a century later, this Cottage is still Enchanted. The magic is also manifested by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra who play pianist Rodney Sauer’s score to perfection with the cello of David Short and violin of Britt Swenson aided by the clarinet of Brian Collins and the trumpet of Dawn Kramer. The ensemble are always so good at comedy and here they present their more soulful side.

 

Thank you to them and especially Ed Lorusso for another project well realised; how else would we find this enchantment? Hopefully it will get a wider release after the Kickstarters as it’s a film many would find resonant.   

 

Photoplay recommends...

 

Mother courage… Stella Dallas (1925)/Lady Windermere’s Fan (1925), Cinema Ritrovato XXXVII, 2023 (Part 3)

Mssrs Horne and Brock take the applause in the Piazza Maggiore

Il Cinema Ritrovato is an experience that leaves you emotionally disrupted, it’s not just all that time spent in darkened cinemas, the relentless watching, pattern recognition, interpretation but also the human connections on screen and off… it leaves you open, and delightfully vulnerable to the enhanced flavours on screen and, in the case of silent film, the invention of the accompanists. Here we had two outstanding new scores that, coupled with the sense of occasion, location and performance produced moments of engagement modern studios would barely comprehend.

The best silent scores don’t pummel you into submission with dozens of drums, decibels and Dolby, they embrace the visuals in sympathy with the narrative and the actors, they duet with the directors and audience to connect our sympathy and imagination, interpret our response and subtly guide it too; a multi-verse of meaning, one that opens up a portal removing you from reality… irresistible forces, for un-resisting volunteers for a kind of magic.

This is no job for anything less than the most experienced of compositional pilots though and in the Piazza Maggiore and then the Teatro Auditorium Manzoni, first Stephen Horne and then Timothy Brock, who conducted the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna, provided scores that enhanced two of the very finest Hollywood performances and silent films. Consider them as restorers, replicating the high impact of these films’ first screenings, Time Lords able to whisk us back to the feelings our grandparents felt. We are all companions now.

Helen Morgan in Applause

There was also an emerging theme across the programme this year – Rouben Mamoulian’s early talkie Applause (1929) featuring another selfless matriarch with Helen Morgan’s Kitty Darling - and one that was at the heart-breaking centre of both these films; the sacrifice of mothers willing to lose everything so that their daughters might succeed. If you think that sounds corny, take a break from the 21^st Century and think back to the women who made a difference in your own family; Jenny, Jessie, Lil, Mabel… they all changed the course and there were entire generations watching just these films.

Stella Dallas (1925)

Directed by Henry King and adapted by Frances Marion from Olive Higgins Prouty's novel, Stella Dallas of course walks that fine line between melodrama and drama. It features characters bound by the constraints of their time and it perhaps a backwards view of social mores even for 1925 but, the story was driven by grief as much as anything else. Prouty wrote the novel soon after the death of her three-year old daughter in 1923 and I’m sure for Prouty this was a case of if only; a tribute to the one lost and the lengths she would have gone to if only she could have.

Any decent into pulpy drama is completely offset by the fiercest performance from Belle Bennett who’s own 16-year-old son had also died either just before she got the part or soon after: whatever the motivations her Stella rings very true and every time I see watch it becomes greater with Stephen’s score so sympathetic and emotionally intelligent.

Belle Bennett

Stella herself, is something of a misfit, a woman of ambition to escape her small-town working-class routes who becomes involved with a rich businessman’s son, Stephen Dallas (Ronald Colman) who has fled from his father’s suicide and disgrace only to start rising again after they marry. New York calls Stephen to business success but Stella doesn’t want to leave the town she knows so well and nor does she want to disrupt the upbringing of their daughter Laurel (Lois Moran, 16-years old and playing both girl and woman in one of the odder practices of the time).

The gap between mother and father grows and Stella spends time with an earthy good-time fella name of Ed Munn (Jean Hersholt who is so very good at playing bad) and needless to say this doesn’t sit well with Stephen who misses the companionship of more refined women such as his former sweetheart Helen Morrison (Alice Joyce) who is now widowed with three boys of her own.

You can see the direction of travel but the humiliations have only just begun as Laurel’s teacher spies Stella having fun with Ed and expels her from school leaving her devastated when the rest of the class fail to turn up for her 10th birthday party. The story moves on a few years and as Laurel comes of age, she forms an attachment with a young rich boy called Richard Grosvenor (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr 15 at the time!) but is ashamed of her mother with her crude ways, working class manners and dress sense.

Stella overhears some of the rich set mocking her and begins to think she can only be holding her daughter back. By this stage she and Stephen have run aground and knowing of his attachment to Helen, Stella asks her competitor directly for help… what follows shows her strength of character and amidst the tragedy she shows her class in sacrifice something only another mother truly understands during the film’s iconic closing sequence.

Faced with such intense emotional extremes, Stephen Horne’s score is perfectly composed and he knows just how to under-score Belle’s expressive restraint and combines with the actress to leave the audience smiling through tears of recognition. Ben Palmer helped to orchestrate and Timothy Brock superbly martialled the sixty-piece orchestra under the stars. There’ll be a Blu-ray release at some point and hopefully further performances of one of the great modern scores of this silent renaissance.

 

Lady Windermere’s Fan (1928)

Irene Rich and May Mcavoy

As the cricketing Ashes started back in the UK, rain unexpectedly stopped play in Bologna and the screening of Ernst Lubitsch’s take on Oscar Wilde’s play was shifted to the splendid Teatro Auditorium Manzoni; a purpose-built modern auditorium with splendid acoustics, all the better to experience the power of Timothy Brock’s new score as conducted by him and played by the mighty Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna.

Given the sophisticated wordplay of Oscar Wilde, he seems an unlikely candidate for silent film but here Ernst Lubitsch takes on Oscar using the wit and sophistication of his direction. Sure, there are some excellent performances but Ernst’s inch-perfect positioning, cross-cutting and way with purely visual messaging ensures that this take on a wordy, comedy of manners works bursts into sensational silence on screen.

The director hardly needs to use title cards as the mood is established, explained and maintained throughout in what is one of the neatest of film: so balanced and perfectly timed, shot and performed… That “touch” is fully in evidence now – the delicate use of key signifiers to lift the tale above predictability and to convey small explosions of meaning in unexpected ways. Take that fan, for example, it’s everywhere: a symbol of marital love, a potential assault weapon, distraction under duress and incriminating evidence. It’s just a fan but Lubitsch uses it to pivot the whole story. That fan is also the undeniably fine hands of Irene Rich and you have another symbol of motherly sacrifice, unbreakable choices that have to be made and confirmation that true love does indeed conquer all.

All begins with Lady Windermere (May McAvoy) facing the troublesome decisions of where to seat her dinner guests at her impending birthday party: where to put the dashing and entertaining Lord Darlington (Ronald Colman on the wrong side again…), right next to her ladyship… at the head of the table perhaps? The Lord arrives to bring handsome substance to her reverie and, whilst she presumes he’s come to see her husband he has her more in mind which, frankly, is caddish behaviour. Meanwhile Lord Windermere (Bert Lytell) is discovering something just as disturbing as a Mrs. Edith Erlynne (Irene Rich) has written to him claiming to be his wife’s mother who was lost to disgrace a long time ago with her daughter having grown up believing her dead and a great moral example. Hold onto your hats, it’s going to be a bumpy ride…

Mrs. Erlynne’s elegant blackmail is expressed through sight of a cheque and the Lord having to add a one to the five hundred he’s started writing following one smiling glance… His wife must never know of her mother’s disgrace and so she begins to lead an “extravagant” life with Windermere’s support, “…not accepted by society but the subject of its gossip…”

There’s a terrific scene at the races when “society” spies in fascination at the intriguing interloper: spy glasses from both men and women including The Duchess of Berwick (Carrie Daumery) leader of the pack. We see multiple points of view until Mrs E. sits down just in front of a group including Lady Windermere her husband, admirer and the gossips. Examining the back of her head with her binoculars the Duchess is delighted to see that Mrs E is going slightly grey and then, seeing her jewels, ponders where her money comes from. All wonderfully bitchy in Oscar Wilde’s immortal way.

Lord Lorton in pursuit

Sat with them is one of London’s most eligible Lord Augustus Lorton (Edward Martindel) who spies this fine filly and is intrigued. As the lady leaves he follows with the director showing their pursuit in longshot, small figures against a backdrop of advertisement-plastered walls: the view on screen narrowing as Lord closes in on Lady… Lorton goes to visit and Lubitsch uses the manner of his entrances to illustrate the developing relationship: at first formal, waiting to be shown through by the maid and then advancing from front door to drawing room with barely a pause: his familiarity only halted by Edith’s last minute swerve: he’s keen.

Meanwhile Darlington can’t help himself and casts aspersions about Lord Windermere’s relationship with Edith. Lady W can scare believe it but sure enough she discovers chequebook evidence of multiple payments to this strange woman… Rumbled, Windermere refuses to reveal all and asks his wife to take his word. Things come to a head though as Windermere asks to re-introduce Edith to society at his wife’s birthday party but she threatens to use the lovely fan he has bought her to assault the interloper… Having invited Edith, Windermere’s un-invitation isn’t seen in time before she arrives to potential humiliation. Cue Lord Lorton who arrives to sweep her into the room – her daughter, the two men chasing her affections and so many idle tongues gathered all in one room…

Lady Windemere hedging her bets

The film is Lubitsch in the raw; it’s very pared down with the focus on character and movement. The sets are elegant and but, as with the racecourse, recede far behind the foregrounded players all of whom are sophisticated and in the cases of the main leads, sensitive. Wilde and Lubitsch is a marriage made in Hollywood though: two men of subtle wit and piercing insights into polite society constrained by manners and rules almost designed to prevent happiness. Any triumph of love is almost accidental and always against the odds: perhaps these folk aren’t much different from those who watch them in the dark?

Timothy Brock’s score, powerful in the auditorium, every section clear and characterful, matched the wit of director and source material and breezes along delightfully in tune with Irene Rich’s powerhouse performance. We overdosed on sheer style and verve, the applause long and repeated almost congratulating ourselves for being there as much as the dozens of players on stage. What a night and what a week!! Brava Bologna, Bellissima!!

Up in the gods waiting for the show to begin... and what a show!

 

 

Lubitsch goes Wilde - Lady Windermere's Fan (1925)

Almost from the get-go silent films tackled their theatrical cousins, retelling plays as if words really didn’t matter. Risky at the best of times such missions were surely impossible when it came to the sophisticated wordplay of Oscar Wilde.

Nazimova did it with interpretive dance and audacious mise en scène for Salomy but here Enrst Lubitsch takes on Oscar using the wit and sophistication of his direction. Sure there are some excellent performances but Ernst’s inch-perfect positioning, cross-cutting and way with purely visual messaging ensures that this take on a wordy, comedy of manners works.

He hardly needs to use title cards as the mood is established, explained and maintained throughout in what is one of the neatest films of the Twenties: so balanced and perfectly timed, shot and performed… I’m finally getting to feel that “touch” the grown-ups talk about – the delicate use of key signifiers to lift the tale above predictability and to convey small explosions of meaning in unexpected ways.

Take, for example, that fan… it’s everywhere: a symbol of marital love, a potential assault weapon, distraction under duress and incriminating evidence. It’s just a fan but Lubitsch uses it so very well.

Put that fan in the hands of an actress as undeniably fine as Irene Rich and you have a symbol of motherly sacrifice, unbreakable choices that have to be made and confirmation that true love does indeed conquer all.

Irene Rich

I was expecting a witty disappointment but what I got was a riveting 86 minutes that might just be one of the greatest cinematic adaptations o f a play: Lubitsch using massive, high and wide sets through which his characters drift in their torments in one sequence a wife and her would be lover changing places over a room that must be 80 feet long – there is no way they can meet in the middle: they are doomed by circumstance to orbit and never embrace in cosmic collision. Unless, that is, a new stellar object appears to play havoc with the order of this mannered and moneyed universe…

May McAvoy

All begins with Lady Windermere (May McAvoy) facing the troublesome decisions of where to seat her dinner guests at her impending birthday party: where to put the dashing and entertaining Lord Darlington (Ronald Colman), right next to her ladyship… at the head of the table perhaps? Talk of the Devil… the Lord arrives to bring handsome substance to her reverie… She presumes he’s come to see her husband… but not this time.

Meanwhile Lord Windermere (Bert Lytell) is discovering something even more disturbing… A Mrs. Edith Erlynne has written to him claiming to be his wife’s mother who was lost to disgrace a long time ago with her daughter having grown up believing her dead and a great moral example…

Bert Lytell

Mrs. Erlynne (superbly played by Miss Rich) duly arrives and uses this unfortunate connection to extract some financial support from Windermere – her elegant blackmail expressed through sight of a cheque and the Lord having to add a one to the five hundred he’s started writing following one smiling glance… His wife must never know of her mother’s disgrace. Rich was just 34 at the time and whilst that initially seems too young… when you do the maths it’s close enough.

Mrs. Erlynne begins to lead an “extravagant” life with Windermere’s support, “…not accepted by society but the subject of its gossip…” There’s a terrific scene at the races when “society” spies in fascination at the intriguing interloper: spy glasses from both men and women including The Duchess of Berwick (Carrie Daumery) leader of the pack. We see multiple points of view until Mrs E. sits down just in front of a group including Lady Windermere her husband, admirer and the gossips.

A day at the races

Examining the back of her head with her binoculars the Duchess is delighted to see that Mrs E is going slightly grey and then, seeing her jewels, ponders where her money comes from. All wonderfully bitchy in Oscar Wilde’s immortal way.

Sat with them is one of London’s most eligible Lord Augustus Lorton (Edward Martindel) who spies this fine filly and is intrigued. As the lady leaves he follows with the director showing their pursuit in longshot, small figures against a backdrop of advertisement-plastered walls: the camera gradually masqued to narrow the screen as Lord closes in on Lady…

The Lord in pursuit

Lorton goes to visit and Lubitsch uses the manner of his entrances to illustrate the developing relationship: at first formal, waiting to be shown through by the maid and then advancing from front door to drawing room with barely a pause: his familiarity only halted by Edith’s last minute swerve: he’s keen.

Meanwhile Darlington can’t help himself and casts aspersions about Lord Windermere’s relationship with Edith. Lady W can scare believe it but sure enough she discovers chequebook evidence of multiple payments to this strange woman… Rumbled, Windermere refuses to reveal all and asks his wife to take his word.

Things are coming to a head though as Windermere asks to re-introduce Edith to society at his wife’s birthday party but she threatens to use the lovely fan he has bought her to assault the interloper… Having invited Edith, Windermere’s un-invitation isn’t seen in time before she arrives to potential humiliation. Cue Lord Lorton who arrives to sweep her into the room – her daughter, the two men chasing her affections and so many idle tongues gathered all in one room…

I won’t give any more away save to say that the fan becomes a significant character almost in its own right.

Garden liaison

The film presents almost as Lubitsch in the raw; it’s very pared down with the focus on character and movement. The sets are elegant and but, as with the racecourse, recede far behind the foregrounded players all of whom are sophisticated and in the cases of the main leads, sensitive.

The cinematography of Charles Van Enger matches his director’s vision and allows for a story so reliant on words to transition so well to the silent screen.

Ronald Coleman and May McAvoy

Wilde and Lubitsch is a marriage made in Hollywood though: two men of subtle wit and piercing insights into polite society constrained by manners and rules almost designed to prevent happiness. Any triumph of love is almost accidental and always against the odds: perhaps these folk aren’t much different from those who watch them in the dark?

I watched the version on the More Treasures from American Film Archives 1894-1931 box set which comes with a sparkly new piano score – it’s available direct or from Amazon but is now collectable – time for a re-release!