Lady Windermere's Fan

Nobody was as savvy about the intricacies of the human heart as Lubitsch, and of how virtue is never an absolute.

This warmly empathetic, highly sophisticated gem is an adaptation of Oscar Wilde, with virtually none of the play's dialog utilized, but as suggestive and outrageous as Wilde himself, conceived, framed and edited as pure cinema.

From the exact same period as Cecil B. DeMille's infinitely more crass sex comedies and Charles Chaplin's equally brilliant and morally ambiguous 'The Woman of Paris', but carried by an indistinguishably European sensibility. Irene Rich as the woman who sacrifices herself in secret is impossibly glamorous and subtle, May McAvoy is truly heartbreaking as the socialite suspicious of her husband's philandering, but Ronald Colman, alas, is left with nothing much to do except smolder sexily at the fringes with those impertinently raised eyebrows.

A highlight is the Ascot game, a marvel of choreography and mime, a delicious baiting of upper class hypocrisy.