Terrible, yet oddly fascinating. It's all too bizarre to be boring though whatever merits Oscar Wilde's original novel may have had, they are missing here. (What was the dark secret between Dorian and Alan Campbell? God forbid that we might perceive there to be anything of a homosexual nature in it; this was 1945, after all). The director, Albert Lewin, had a kitsch sensibility that suited the material, (it's full of Eastern promise), though the decadence is a bit thin. The Oscar Wilde character is represented by George Sanders' Lord Henry Wotton and he speaks the epigrammatic dialogue as well as anybody and Hurd Hatfield, in his first, and really only, major role is ideally cast as Dorian; he's blank and looks like a waxwork dummy rather than a living person. He's ageless alright. And a lovely young Anglea Lansbury is touching and unquestionably right as Sybil Vane. Lansbury never looked this young in a movie, (the year before her maid servant in "Gaslight" seemed plump and old before her time), and she works wonders with the music-hall song 'Little Yellow Bird'. Harry Stradling's superb black-and-white cinematography won him an Oscar. At times you think you think you are watching a much better film than you really are.
Review of The Picture of Dorian Gray
