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Tamed Wilde
Jan. 11th, 2026 09:53 amOnce again, a morally naive Victorian is forced to confront the reality that scandalous people are just as human as she is in 1949's The Fan. It's an adaptation of Oscar Wilde's 1893 play Lady Windermere's Fan directed by Otto Preminger with a screenplay co-written by Dorothy Parker. Reviews quoted on Wikipedia lament the absence of a great deal of Wilde's famous dialogue in the adaptation. It is a shame but Preminger was a great director and the film features George Sanders, an ideal Wildean actor, and Jeanne Craine, one of the most beautiful actresses of all time.
It was also Madeleine Carroll's final role and she plays the typical Wildean problem character, a woman with good intentions and a scandalous secret life, Mrs. Erlynne. Carroll was a good sport for taking the role as it requires a woman believably old enough to be Jeanne Crain's mother. Carroll was 19 when Crain was born in 1925, so it's plausible, but this was a time when many aging actresses sought only roles that defied their age. After this film, Carroll retired from acting to devote herself to helping people who lost their homes during World War II, so it seems like she was a woman of good character all around. The film actually begins with some incredible footage of war ravaged London though the bulk of the film retains the play's Victorian setting. Preminger and his screenwriters chose a framing device set in contemporary London for Mrs. Erlynne to narrate the story to Sanders' character, Lord Darlington.
Crain plays Lady Windermere whose husband, Lord Windermere (Richard Greene), is secretly supporting Mrs. Erlynne financially. Gossip spreads and, of course, distorts the truth so that when Lady Windermere gets wind of it, she's led to believer her husband is having an affair with the woman. When the truth is revealed, Lady Windermere is forced to confront the shallowness of her moral rigidity.
Without Wilde's dialogue, the story is a fairly simplistic moral tale but it's beautifully shot with some nice performances.
Here's a scene featuring Sanders and Crain that retains a lot of Wilde's dialogue though it lacks some of the best lines:
Unfortunately, it's missing this wonderful line:
LORD DARLINGTON: Do you know I am afraid that good people do a great deal of harm in this world. Certainly the greatest harm they do is that they make badness of such extraordinary importance. It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious. I take the side of the charming, and you, Lady Windermere, can’t help belonging to them.
The Fan is available on The Criterion Channel.
It was also Madeleine Carroll's final role and she plays the typical Wildean problem character, a woman with good intentions and a scandalous secret life, Mrs. Erlynne. Carroll was a good sport for taking the role as it requires a woman believably old enough to be Jeanne Crain's mother. Carroll was 19 when Crain was born in 1925, so it's plausible, but this was a time when many aging actresses sought only roles that defied their age. After this film, Carroll retired from acting to devote herself to helping people who lost their homes during World War II, so it seems like she was a woman of good character all around. The film actually begins with some incredible footage of war ravaged London though the bulk of the film retains the play's Victorian setting. Preminger and his screenwriters chose a framing device set in contemporary London for Mrs. Erlynne to narrate the story to Sanders' character, Lord Darlington.
Crain plays Lady Windermere whose husband, Lord Windermere (Richard Greene), is secretly supporting Mrs. Erlynne financially. Gossip spreads and, of course, distorts the truth so that when Lady Windermere gets wind of it, she's led to believer her husband is having an affair with the woman. When the truth is revealed, Lady Windermere is forced to confront the shallowness of her moral rigidity.
Without Wilde's dialogue, the story is a fairly simplistic moral tale but it's beautifully shot with some nice performances.
Here's a scene featuring Sanders and Crain that retains a lot of Wilde's dialogue though it lacks some of the best lines:
Unfortunately, it's missing this wonderful line:
LORD DARLINGTON: Do you know I am afraid that good people do a great deal of harm in this world. Certainly the greatest harm they do is that they make badness of such extraordinary importance. It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious. I take the side of the charming, and you, Lady Windermere, can’t help belonging to them.
The Fan is available on The Criterion Channel.
