TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Martha Wilcox Madeleine Carroll is way passed her best in this film and it comes towards the end of her career when she was making one film a year. I've never been a fan of Carroll even when she was in the Hitchcock films. And she added nothing to Cecil B. DeMille's 'North West Mounted Police'.George Sanders plays an older man, but in flashback when he plays his usual self he is taken by Jeanne Crain. He was better in 'Samson and Delilah' which came out the same year.I think Otto Preminger's handling of 'Laura' was far superior. This offering comes nowhere near the quality of 'Laura' in terms of story, performance, direction and production values.

st-shot Truncating the title and adding a little addendum of his own to the story director Otto Preminger offer's up a well polished version of Oscar Wilde's, Lady Windermere's Fan. A devastating Victorian satire in its day Preminger updates the opening to post war London with two of the now doddering principals drawn once again together over the fan re-kindling memories of when it first played such an important role in their lives.At an auction selling objects from bombed buildings Lady Erlynne (Madeline Carroll) attempts to reclaim a fan given her decades earlier. The auctioneer is reluctant to part with it on her say so unless she can find a witness. She goes and looks up "cad from the past" Lord Darlington (George Sanders) to vouch for her and after an initial re-buff the two recall the bell époque together and how his deviousness almost ended a marriage while her sacrifice saved it.Preminger seamlessly injects the war as a catalyst to springboard the play as well as add a sly touch that reveals itself comically at the end. With his ability to speak film language as well as anyone The Fan flows with long takes and fine performances by the principals Carroll, Jean Crain, Richard Greene and George Sanders who seemed born to play Wilde characters.The Fan is one well crafted work that Preminger elevates by eschewing the easy task of filming a classic stage satire and adding a stark but unobtrusive contemporary sub plot that not only advances the storyline but in the true spirit of Wilde pays homage to his timeless words.

edwagreen Still, another picture depicting a mother's sacrifice. Don't you think it was naive of Jeanne Crain never to realize that Madeleine Carroll was her mother? Who else but a mother would speak to Crain in the way Carroll did?Carroll steals the film as a woman with a past who returns to London to secure her dead daughter's fan. The only way she can prove her involvement with the fan is to reintroduce herself to the elderly George Sanders, once a lover of the Crain character so many years ago.This is definitely a film describing the mores, culture and gossip of London society, circa turn of the century. Martita Hunt, as the duchess, is just perfect in the part of the gossiper thriving attention.Carroll gave up a potential life of luxury to save her daughter's marriage. Didn't anyone think it odd that Carroll, so much older, could actually be the lover of Crain's husband, Richard Greene, her son-in-law?

dbdumonteil Based on an Oscar Wilde,a delightful bittersweet period piece which is some kind of reductio ad aburdum that conjugal love can be the way to happiness and that you must not throw it all away.A long flashback,where a fan sold in auction becomes the Madeleine de Proust which revives memories of long ago,when the two people who meet again after all those years return to a time when they were young and handsome.It's also a good lesson in teaching us that things are not necessarily what they seem.It is also a scathing attack on this society of snubs ,those privileged classes whose favorite pastime is putting their fellow men (and women) down.