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!

 

 

Way out West with Vilma… Kennington Bioscope, Silent Western Saturday

In his introduction to The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926), Kevin Brownlow revealed that Samuel Goldwyn’s wife had been the Imelda Marcos of silent film preservation… The great mogul had stored all of his films in her closet and, in order to make room for her shoes, she cleared them out except for the ones featuring Ronald Coleman and Gary Cooper.

Those men are two big reasons to celebrate this remarkable film but it also features some of the most stunning cinematography of the era and if you think Abel Gance was impressive in capturing equine movement on frame than check out Henry King and his cinematographers George Barnes, Thomas Branigan and Gregg Toland. In close quarters to the excellent restoration projected tonight you could almost be alongside Ronald and Gary as the sun-baked, sand-drenched, landscape swirls around you in a crystal clear golden-yellow.

Vilma Banky

And on top of all that you have Vilma Banky… but today was about more than just one film and one generation but a celebration of the vast breadth of silent westerns; a genre so broad it deserves sub categorisation.

I hadn’t seen a single film on the programme for the inaugural Bioscope Silent Western Saturday, but it featured familiar names, Bronco Billy, Tom Mix, Rex the Wonder Horse… Somehow these once hugely-popular stars persist in memory alongside the real characters they emulated. More than just history, Westerns are part of America’s mythology – in some cases the real cowboys and cowgirls became performers on stage, circus and in film and eventually, inevitably, a cowboy-actor became president followed, more recently, by a low-down, no good, dirty double-crossing gambler.

William S Hart resists!

Programme 1: Shoot 'em Up Starter Thundering Hoofs (1924)

Kevin Brownlow introduced this action-packed opener with a clip from his Hollywood series in which he’d interviewed Hoofs’ director, Albert S. Rogell. Rogell explained how his star, Fred Thomson, former athlete and Great War veteran, had fallen under a four horse stage coach during the film’s set piece chase in which he has to jump on and pull the vehicle to a halt. He ended up in hospital with leg injuries while his director figured out how to finish off the scene using a stunt double - the ground-breaking Yakima Canutt.

Fred Huntley, Willie Fung and Fred Thomson in Thundering Hooves (1924)

Again, those blurred lines between reality and fiction. Thomson’s a likeable hero with considerable energy and the twinkling smile of a genuine star. His honest cow-poke, Dave Marshall, is more than a match for the scheming Luke Severn (William Lowery) and succeeds in relieving him of both the girl, Carmelita Estrada (picture-perfect, Anna May) and the horse, Silver King the Horse - played by, of course, Silver King, a horse.

The story was written by one Marion Jackson, which may or may not have been a nom de plume for Frances Marion, Thomson’s wife.

Lilian Henley played along with a lightness of touch and a refusal to over-play the wild-west chord sequence on the piano: all in keeping with Thomson’s playfulness and Hoofs’ romantic heart.           

Programme 2: The Early Western

John Oliver talked us through the genesis of the Western with a mix of Eastern-Westerns and Western-Westerns… Initially the genre was mostly filmed out East with the very first western, Cripple Creek Bar-room (1899), being filmed on a New York City roof. As films drifted towards better lighting conditions in the actual west, the authenticity increased along with the scale of the scenery.

Mabel Normand and Dark Cloud in The Squaw's Love (1911)

The Squaw’s Love (1911) directed by Griffith for Biograph showed how the treatment of Native Americans also changed over this time. Here they were the centre of the story – albeit including Mabel Normand in make-up – in an adventure of their own.

By the time of The Indian Vestal (1911) Indians were seen massacring a group of settlers and making off with a blonde child who becomes their medicine woman (Viola Barry). After years of providing mystical services for the tribe she meets a white trapper (Hobart Bosworth) and one thing leads to several others.

Custer’s Last Fight (1912) was historically interesting for showing how Custer was viewed thirty years after his demise but it lacked the dynamism of the fictional films being too concerned with fact. It was still fascinating all the same: even defeats need to be explained away by the ultimate victors.

Broncho Billy’s Adventures (1911) ended the morning on a light-hearted high as Billy (Gilbert Anderson) intervenes to make sure true love runs smooth as he fends off would be suitors for a hotelier’s daughter (Edna Fisher). Not your typical Billy but he couldn’t get the girl all of the time.

Meg Morley accompanied for this section with the surity of a sharp-shooter waiting to pounce on the slightest shift in tone and narrative. She and used some intriguingly unresolved progressions for Broncho Billy that stuck in my head for hours.

Programme 3: A Cowboy's Best Friend

Lunch consumed, the pace picked up in two fast and furious action films featuring horses, or rather ponies and a wonder horse. The pace was breakneck and, in spite of three horses being top billed in Rex’s film, the stories were dramatically compelling.

"Thrills? Man, you never knew what the word meant before!"

Saved by the Pony Express (1914) saw Tom Mix jumping on an off a succession of ponys to illustrate the importance of this fast moving postal service in saving your pal from wrongful conviction. Whilst in The Devil Horse (1926), we got to see how a horse could fight, fall in love and “hate Indians”; truly Rex was a wonder as well as being a horse – if not a politically-correct one.

John Sweeney played along at full gallop crashing down hard on the deeper notes with all the force of Rex’s thundering hooves.

Programme 4: Women Out West

Michelle Facey presented a session on female western stars and went so deep into her subject she uncovered a film featuring a troop of – currently – unknown actors. Michelle had clearly been burning the midnight oil lamp, locked in her North London garret with stacks of primary sources and the ghost of Vilma Banky, she brought back to screen a series of wonderful western women.

Josie Sedgwick was a crosspatch Calamity Jane in The Sawdust Trail (1924) and I just wish we could have seen a bit more to see her land one on the sneaky “Hoot”(yeah, sure…) Gibson.

Texas Guinan

A Girl of the West (1911) featured Lillian Christy as the pugnacious Polly Dixon, a girl who can handle horse, fists and rifle as well as any man as she proves in foiling an audacious robbery. Apparently the decade featured over 60 serials featuring such women of independent thought and deed: that sounds like a trend to me.

The Substitute (1911) was the mystery film and the only named contributor is Lillian M Rubenstein which is a shame because the actress playing Jennie Rock a fearless telegraph operator and station agent, is superb, full of character and guile. Another case for The Silent Detective…

Two Little Rangers (1912) was directed by Alice Guy Blache and featured Vinnie Burns a stuntwoman turned actress as the eldest of two feisty sisters who put paid toe “Wild Bill” Gray’s nefarious plans. At one point Vinnie’s character fashions a bow and arrow out of sticks and – presumably – a garter strap: there’s resourceful!

Vinnie Burns at Cliffhanger Point in Fort Lee, NJ for Two Little Rangers (1912)

Last up was Texas Guinan, once described as “the female William S Hart”, in South O'Santa Fe (1919). Texas plays a tough girl throughout and you’re in no doubt that she as deadly as the males.

Lillian Henley and Meg Morley took turns on the old Joanna.

There was so much detail to savour; it would be good to learn more…

Programme 5: William S. Hart The Narrow Trail (1917)

Kevin Brownlow showed us his own 35mm print taken from the original camera negatives and reminded us that once upon a time “they all looked like this”. The print was indeed very sharp, with the odd century-old blemish but an authentic look, free of digital clean-up – an analogue experience created by light patterning photosensitive cells.

For me this was the film of the day, an almost flawless 75 minutes of pacing, performance and glorious scenery – including San Francisco Bay.

Sylvia Bremer and William S. Hart

Hart is mesmeric in this film and, in spite of his 53 years, his Ice Harding is a believable leading man effortlessly shifting from heartless highwayman to a lovelorn loser in search of a perfect second chance, he covers it all with actorly grace whilst sitting in the saddle with the true conviction of a western soul.

He’s saved by the love of a good woman Betty Werdin (Australian-born Sylvia Breamer – the spit of Helena Bonham-Carter!) who has more in common with him than he knows. There’s an excellent fight sequence in which Ice takes on half a dancehall in something approaching method-brawling; it’s people like William and Lillian that brought authenticity to the early screen.

Neil Brand accompanied in emphatic style throwing in some resounding themes and noir flavours reflecting the film’s cinematic prescience: Laura and lassoes… whose heart can you really trust when the lies run so deep?

Programme 6: Mrs Goldwyn’s favourite men

The day ends as it began with Mr Brownlow introducing the stunning Barbara Worth. The film starts like an outtake from Greed as a young woman (Vilma Banky) buries her husband in the sand and then battles to save her daughter from a sandstorm. It’s a brutal beginning and photographed so clearly it could have been made tomorrow.

Vilma Banky in The Winning of Barabara Worth (1926)

The woman perishes but her daughter, Barbara, is found alive by a Mr Worth (Charles Willis Lane) and grows up to be played by Vilma. This western is definitely in the Civil Engineering sub-category and tells the story of how Mr Worth and his business rival, McDonald (Ed Brady) try to dam the Colorado River and irrigate the Californian plains.

Ronald Coleman plays Willard Holmes who works with the rival whilst Gary Cooper plays Abe Lee the boy Barbara grew up with. Their romantic rivalry runs parallel to business as the mood gets mean as McDonald refuses to recognise the need for additional reinforcements on the dam… In a film like this that’s never a good sign. Sometimes the story doesn’t quite match the splendour of the scenery but it is a magnificent thing all in all and fitting end to a day of surprises and high quality.

Cyrus Gabrysch accompanied filling the huge spaces with Death Valley cool as humanity fights for life and love against overwhelming heat and the onrushing Colorado River.

Ronald, Vilma and Gary

All thanks to those who organised and volunteered – it was the warmest day of the year outside on the streets of Kennington but inside we drifted the high plains sipping a heady brew of past glories tasted amidst live light and music.

Teardrops… Stella Dallas (1925), Barbican with Stephen Horne and Elizabeth-Jane Baldry

“The slender rapier triumphs over the spiked bludgeon throughout the unfurling of the screen conception of Olive Higgins Prouty's novel…”  Mordaunt Hall, New York Times 17^th November 1925.

Well… I was warned I might need a box of tissues and if even Mordaunt was so moved; you know there’s an irresistible sadness about to pass in front of your eyes. What’s more accompanist Stephen Horne was assisted by Elizabeth-Jane Baldry on harp – there’s no way I was going to get through this without, you know…

Directed by Henry King with an adaptation from Frances Marion Stella Dallas walks that fine line between melodrama and drama. It features characters bound by the invisible 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.

Lobby card with bennett, Colman and Moran

Olive Higgins Prouty wrote the novel soon after the death of her three-year old daughter in 1923 and it is the story of the sacrifices a mother makes in order to ensure her daughter’s success in life. 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 onto pure Victoriana is also offset by a fierce performance from Belle Bennett whose own son had also died just before she got the part: her Stella rings very true. As Pamela Hutchinson noted during her illuminating introduction, she had already launched a one-woman campaign to get the role and rewarded Goldwyn and King with a display that must have resonated with so many parents in an era when childhood mortality was far more commonplace.

Stella will do anything for her daughter even to the extent of sacrificing her own happiness: her life means nothing if her daughter cannot live well.

Belle Bennett

The film begins with a parental sacrifice as Stephen Dallas Senior (Charles Willis Lane), wealthy industrialist, takes his own life after being accused of financial wrong-doing. His son, Stephen Jnr (Ronald Colman) goes off to work in a remote corner of their business empire.

Away in this small town environment, Stephen mingles with ordinary working folk from outside his class. He forms an attachment with one lass, Stella, amidst some funny scenes on her family porch as her brothers try and interfere – the film’s not all doom and gloom and its humour also brings balance.

Stephen and Stella try to romance

Stella and Mr Dallas wed and have a daughter, Laurel, and yet it soon becomes apparent that the couple have different priorities: he needs to drive the family business in New York whilst she is happy bringing up her daughter amongst people she knows.

As gaps start to appear, not least in terms of geography, Stella spends time with an earthy good-time fella name of Ed Munn (Jean Hersholt who is so very good at playing characters with a soft moral centre…). 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 – no relation) who is now married with three boys.

Back on small-town, Laurel’s teacher spies Stella having fun with Ed and expels her from school leaving her humiliated when the rest of the class fail to turn up for her 10^th birthday party. There are some sweet moments as Stella and Laurel (who is now Lois Moran) make the best of a bad day… even Dad is not present but then why would he be; he’s got a business to run.

One party and two guests

The story moves on a few years and Laurel comes of age still played by Lois Moran (just 16 at the time and later much favoured by F Scot Fitzgerald according to PH). 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…

I won’t go any further but the story becomes very focused and desperately sad - perhaps an ode to lost children for whom a mother would rather grieve when lost yet still alive rather than gone forever.

Doug Junior and Lois Moran

Faced with such emotional extremes, Stephen Horne’s score is restrained and melodic. He knows just how to under-score high emotions and this was the third time I’ve seen him play in just over a week, each one a wildly different film.

Elizabeth-Jane Baldry’s golden harp melded perfectly with Stephen’s music and is a hugely variable instrument: a piano without the keys but with an unique, taught beauty of its own. There really isn’t enough harp in my life…

Ronald and Aunty Alice (maybe)

Stella Dallas was playing as part of the Barbican’s CheapThrills, Trash, Movies and the Art of Transgression series as well as their regular silent film and live music strand. It was projected from an actual 35mm film which was a very good copy – not tinted like the old fuzzy Sunrise Silents DVD from which my screen shots are grabbed.

Not sure exactly how transgressive things got but it certainly wasn’t cheap emotionally and that is what sets it apart from mere genre: a genuinely-elevated play about grief and sacrifice. To this extent it's really all about Belle Bennett and her ability to channel her own pain into performance.

Belle rings true

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!