The Fan is a 1949

1949 in film

The year 1949 in film involved some significant events.-Top grossing films :- Awards :Academy Awards:*Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff, starring Bud Abbott and Lou Costello...

 American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 drama film

Drama film

A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...

 directed by Otto Preminger

Otto Preminger

Otto Ludwig Preminger was an Austro–Hungarian-American theatre and film director.After moving from the theatre to Hollywood, he directed over 35 feature films in a five-decade career. He rose to prominence for stylish film noir mysteries such as Laura and Fallen Angel...

. The screenplay

Screenplay

A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...

 by Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker was an American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th century urban foibles....

, Walter Reisch, and Ross Evans is based on the 1892 play Lady Windermere's Fan

Lady Windermere's Fan

Lady Windermere's Fan, A Play About a Good Woman is a four act comedy by Oscar Wilde, first produced 22 February 1892 at the St James's Theatre in London. The play was first published in 1893...

by Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...

. The play had been filmed at least twice before, a 1916 silent film

Silent film

A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...

 and a later adaptation

Lady Windermere's Fan (1925 film)

Lady Windermere's Fan is a 1925 American silent film directed by Ernst Lubitsch. It is based on Oscar Wilde's 1893 play Lady Windermere's Fan which was first played in America that year by Julia Arthur as Lady Windermere and Maurice Barrymore as Lord Darlington.- Cast :*Ronald Colman as Lord...

 by Ernst Lubitsch

Ernst Lubitsch

Ernst Lubitsch was a German-born film director. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as his prestige grew, his films were promoted as having "the Lubitsch touch."In 1947 he received an Honorary Academy Award for his...

 in 1925.

Plot synopsis

The film opens in a post-World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 auction

Auction

An auction is a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bid, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder...

 house, where an elderly woman is trying to acquire an attractive fan she claims was once hers. A flashback

Flashback (narrative)

Flashback is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point the story has reached. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story’s primary sequence of events or to fill in crucial backstory...

 to the Victorian era

Victorian era

The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...

 of Wilde's play reveals she is the scandalous Mrs. Erlynne, who in middle age

Middle age

Middle age is the period of age beyond young adulthood but before the onset of old age. Various attempts have been made to define this age, which is around the third quarter of the average life span of human beings....

 becomes entangled with Lord Arthur Windermere, whose young and beautiful but socially conservative wife Margaret tends to judge others harshly. Lord Windermere financially supports Mrs. Erlynne, allowing her to live in the elegant manner to which she's accustomed, and the couple become the favorite subject of local gossip

Gossip

Gossip is idle talk or rumour, especially about the personal or private affairs of others, It is one of the oldest and most common means of sharing facts and views, but also has a reputation for the introduction of errors and variations into the information transmitted...

s. When Margaret hears the stories, she mistakenly believes the two are involved in a clandestine affair and allows herself to succumb to the charms of Lord Robert Darlington, who has made no secret of his ongoing romantic interest in her. In order to ensure the younger woman does not make the same mistakes she has in the past, Mrs. Erlynne reveals a shocking secret - she is Lady Windermere's mother, whom Margaret was told had died when the woman abandoned her husband and daughter for another man. In order to protect the girl's reputation, Mrs. Erlynne sacrifices her own happiness by placing herself in a compromising position that jeopardizes her pending marriage to Augustus Lorton.

Principal cast

• Madeleine Carroll
  Madeleine Carroll
  Edith Madeleine Carroll was an English actress, popular in the 1930s and 1940s.-Early life:Carroll was born at 32 Herbert Street in West Bromwich, England. She graduated from the University of Birmingham, England with a B.A. degree...
  
   ..... Mrs. Erlynne
• Jeanne Crain
  Jeanne Crain
  Jeanne Elizabeth Crain was an American actress.-Early life:Crain was born in Barstow, California, to George A. Crain, a school teacher, and Loretta Carr; she was of Irish heritage on her mother's side, and of English and distant French descent on her father's...
  
   ..... Margaret Windermere
• Richard Greene
  Richard Greene
  Richard Marius Joseph Greene was a noted English film and television actor. A matinee idol who appeared in more than 40 films, he was perhaps best known for the lead role in the long-running British TV series The Adventures of Robin Hood, which ran for 143 episodes from 1955 to 1960.It has been...
  
   ..... Arthur Windermere
• George Sanders
  George Sanders
  George Sanders was a British actor.George Sanders may also refer to:*George Sanders , Victoria Cross recipient in World War I...
  
   ..... Robert Darlington
• Martita Hunt
  Martita Hunt
  Martita Hunt was an English theatre and film actress.-Early life:Hunt was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina on 30 January 1900 to British parents Alfred and Marta Hunt...
  
   ..... Duchess of Berwick
• Hugh Dempster
  Hugh Dempster
  Hugh Dempster was a British theatre and film actor.Born in London, Dempster began his screen career in the silent film era...
  
   ..... Lord Augustus Lorton
• Richard Ney
  Richard Ney
  Richard Ney was an American actor and investment counselor.He was born in New York City, the son of Erwin Maximillian Ney and Rebie Margaret Flood. He was the grandson of the Rev. Theodore L. Flood, editor of The Chautauquan...
  
   ..... James Hopper

Principal production credits

• Producer
  Film producer
  A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
  
   ..... Otto Preminger
• Original Music
  Film score
  A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...
  
   ..... Daniele Amfitheatrof
  Daniele Amfitheatrof
  -Early life:Amfitheatrof was born in St. Petersburg, into a family that was distinguished in various areas of the arts and culture. His father, Aleksander Amfiteatrov, was a noted writer. His mother Illaria , an accomplished singer and pianist, had studied privately with Rimsky-Korsakov.The...
  
  
• Cinematography
  Cinematography
  Cinematography is the making of lighting and camera choices when recording photographic images for cinema. It is closely related to the art of still photography...
  
   ..... Joseph LaShelle
  Joseph LaShelle
  Joseph LaShelle, A.S.C. was a Los Angeles born film cinematographer.He won an Academy Award for Laura , and was nominated eight additional times.-Career:...
  
  
• Art Direction
  Art director
  The art director is a person who supervise the creative process of a design.The term 'art director' is a blanket title for a variety of similar job functions in advertising, publishing, film and television, the Internet, and video games....
  
   ..... Leland Fuller, Lyle R. Wheeler
  Lyle R. Wheeler
  Lyle Reynolds Wheeler, , was an Academy Award-winning American motion picture art director....
  
  
• Set Decoration
  Set decorator
  A set decorator is in charge of the set dressing on a film set, which includes the furnishings, wallpaper, lighting fixtures, and many of the other objects that will be seen in the film. Props and set dressing often overlap, but are provided by different departments...
  
   ..... Paul S. Fox, Thomas Little
  Thomas Little
  Thomas Little was a United States set decorator on more than 450 Hollywood movies between 1932 and 1953. He won a total of 6 Oscars for art direction and received 21 nominations in the same category...
  
  
• Costume Design
  Costume design
  Costume design is the fabrication of apparel for the overall appearance of a character or performer. This usually involves researching, designing and building the actual items from conception. Costumes may be for a theater or cinema performance but may not be limited to such...
  
   ..... René Hubert, Charles Le Maire

Critical reception

In his review in the New York Times, Bosley Crowther

Bosley Crowther

Bosley Crowther was a journalist and author who was film critic for The New York Times for 27 years. His reviews and articles helped shape the careers of actors, directors and screenwriters, though his reviews, at times, were unnecessarily mean...

 observed, "Most of the brittle wit and satire of Mr. Wilde's conversation piece has been lost in the making of this . . . nicely costumed picture [which] is a strangely uninspired nostalgic romance."

TV Guide

TV Guide

TV Guide is a weekly American magazine with listings of TV shows.In addition to TV listings, the publication features television-related news, celebrity interviews, gossip and film reviews and crossword puzzles...

rates the film two out of a possible four stars and comments, "Preminger's version, despite a strong cast, was bowdlerized by the scripters into a soapy mess . . . As is too often the case with filmed classics, dialog was sacrificed to further a perverted plot. Wilde's witty aphorisms were excised, and with them went any merit the film might have had."

External links

• The Fan at the Internet Movie Database