Already a critically acclaimed director in Germany, Ernst Lubitsch was invited to Hollywood in the early twenties by the reigning star of the era, Mary Pickford. His success continued in the States as he brought to the American cinema the distinctive aspects of European comedy, replete with what one critic would call "all its charm, decadence, and frivolity." Among his finest American films of the silent era, Lady Windermere’s Fan is a sophisticated adaptation of the Oscar Wilde play that injects the "Lubitsch touch"—a supreme gift for visual detail—into this classic comedy of manners. It is, also, notably, the first film to have been screened at the HFA, in 1979.