Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan [1916]

Direction is by Fred Paul, a now forgotten figure, though he was well known as an actor and director in the silent era. As an actor, he was famous for playing clean-cut heroes such as Nayland Smith, intrepid nemesis of the villainous Dr Fu Manchu. His direction of Lady Windermere's Fan is stolid and unadventurous. Essentially he shoots it as theatre, the camera taking up a fixed frontal position from which it rarely budges. The acting is mostly in keeping with Paul's approach--the cast give very much the same performances they must have perfected on the West End stage. The liveliest scene, oddly enough, takes place at a dog show (a venue that plays no part in Wilde's original), where Paul favours the dogs with a lot more close-ups than he ever grants to his actors.

This print is the version distributed in the USA by DW Griffith's Triangle company, and a few clumsy cuts early on may be the result of US censorship. Nicholas Brown's music, specially commissioned for this release, is scored for piano trio, and neatly captures the edgy, genteel flavour of the period. --Philip Kemp