The Fan

In a London auction room after the war, an elderly woman tries to reclaim a fan she says was once hers, and the film goes back from there. Lord Windermere is a man everyone, his young wife Margaret included, takes for a perfect husband. When he starts making frequent visits to a mysterious newcomer, Mrs Erlynne, who is determined to get into London society, the marriage begins to give way, and Margaret learns that her husband has been giving this woman large sums of money. Otto Preminger moved Oscar Wilde’s 1892 play Lady Windermere’s Fan into the present, dropped its three-act shape and cut a good deal of its wit. Dorothy Parker, Walter Reisch and Ross Evans wrote the screenplay. This was the fourth film adaptation of the play and the first with sound. The record misspells the woman’s name as Erylnne.