The film made by Ernst Lubitsch from Lady Windermere’s Fan is not easily recognizable as a version of Oscar Wilde’s comedy. For the plot is the only thing that Lubitsch has taken from Wilde, and the plot of Lady Windermere’s Fan is something to which no one has ever paid much attention. In itself, it’s old-fashioned, banal, and even rather cheap, and it is, therefore, ideal from the point of view of the Hollywood producer. Mr. Lubitsch has brushed off the sparkle of wit and cleared away the atmosphere of cynicism which formerly obscured and made tolerable this highly conventional comedy; but he has clothed it in such beautiful photography and directed it with so much resourcefulness that he has turned out a very attractive film. The silver and gray London streets, the white-gowned or black-morning-coated figures, standing in high-ceilinged rooms or looking out of long- curtained windows, are in his most distinguished manner, and his theatrical ingenuity, his great knack of shooting common- place incidents from inobvious and revelatory angles, though less amusing than in Kiss Me Again, is at least effective as ever. At one of the early showings of Lady Windermere’s Fan, one was given a demonstration of another phase of Lubitsch’s genius – his ability to induce his actors to embody his own ideas. The actress who played Mrs. Erlynne, Miss Irene Rich, appeared on the stage in person and made a little speech. In her role of the clever adventuress, Miss Rich had been notably successful – smart, slender, brunette, and lovely, with a charming air of sweetness and frankness which did not conceal, however, the exercise of a calculated tact, the product of much wordly experience. But in person, Miss Irene Rich turned out to be something quite different – a wholesome strapping girl from the Coast, as blonde as a Pacific Peach and as well-grown as a sequoia tree, who has nev- er, it appears, hitherto played anything other than rôles of betrayed and abandoned wives. That Lubitsch should have seen her possibilities as Oscar Wilde’s Mrs. Erlynne and enabled her to realize them succesfully is a proof of the cardinal difference that an intelligent director may make to the acting of the moving pictures. This is perhaps even more important in films than on the speaking stage, since, in the former, the actor has no audience but only the director to play to, and the relation between actor and director is closer and more direct. The effect of certain directors on their actors is, in fact, said to be almost hypnotic. Who knows but that a certain of the Hollywood pretty girls as well as of the Hollywood male popinjays might be turned into respectable performers taking part in attractive films if there were only enough German directors imported to mesmerize them?

Edmund Wilson, “A German Director in Hollywood” (24 March 1926), in The American Earthquake (Doubleday Anchor Books, 1958)