Silent Oscar Wilde! If any filmmaker in history could convey the wit of the audaciously verbal Wilde in purely visual terms, it was the audaciously clever Ernst Lubitsch, aided here by a superb cast: May McAvoy as Lady Windermere, Ronald Colman as Lord Darlington, and Irene Rich as the notorious Mrs. Erlynne. Wilde’s biting comedy of social affectation and hypocrisy finds perfect expression under Lubitsch’s deft direction. The two masters shared an ethos, voiced here by Wilde’s Lord Darlington: “Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.”
35mm print source: Library of Congress
Co-presented by the California Film Institute
ASL interpretation provided