We first meet Lord Henry Wotton in his carriage reading Les Fleurs du Mal, a dead give away to the corrupt pleasures and literary pretensions that director/writer Albert Lewin is going to ladle up for us. Lord Henry is a man who speaks in a continuing stream of tiresomely witty and cynical epigrams a man named Wilde, hired for the purpose, prepares for him each morning. Lord Henry is on his way to meet a friend, the painter Basil Hallward. And at Hallward's studio he spots the portrait of an aesthetically handsome, Chopin playing, innocent young man named Dorian Gray. And, by coincidence, Dorian is in Hallward's parlor playing the piano and waiting to pose.
Says Lord Henry (George Sanders) to the impressionable young man, "There's no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral. The aim of life is self-development, to realize one's nature perfectly. That's what we're here for. A man should live out his life fully and completely, give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream. There's only one way to get rid of a temptation and that's to yield to it. Resist it, and the soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself. There's nothing that cures the soul but the senses, just as there is nothing that cures the senses but the soul." If we haven't gotten the idea yet, during this turgid bit of life philosophy, Lord Henry is at the same time using paint alcohol to carefully kill the butterfly he had captured in his hat.
And before you know it, Dorian Gray (Hurd Hatfield) decides he never wants to age and wants to explore all those temptations he's heard about. It's not long before the portrait changes a bit, so he puts it in his attic. While Gray experiences the delights of debauchery, and the special delights of debauching others, Angela Lansbury shows up, excellently, as the tragic Sibyl Vane. Donna Reed also shows up as a young woman being groomed by Hollywood for star roles. Lansbury, 20 years old, doesn't need the Hollywood grooming. She's strikingly good. And Dorian Gray never ages. But, oh, does that hidden portrait show a man we'd never want to meet in a dark side street, or, for that matter, in broad daylight...leering, cankerous, face aflame with corrupt poisons, pustules leaking vile fluid, aching to caress and tear tender, uncorrupted flesh. Wow! But fate and justice will have its way. Dorian Gray finds a slender chance at redemption, and even Lord Henry, when he sees the result of his philosophy of life, looks taken aback. Just to remind us how serious this story is, we also have Cedric Hardwicke speaking a narrative. It's just as unconsciously amusing as Herbert Marshall's narrative in The Razor's Edge.
The Picture of Dorian Gray is lush, earnest melodrama, tinged with the kind of oh-my- goodness-horror that polite society might say holds a moral lesson. The movie isn't as overpoweringly pretentious as Lewin's Pandora and the Flying Dutchman. That one could have derailed James Mason's and Ava Gardner's careers if Mason hadn't been such a good actor and Gardner such a force of female nature.
The movie is driven by Lord Henry's philosophy and the depiction of what that philosophy will lead to. George Sanders was never better than when he could drip cynicism like a beaker filled to the brim with acid. He delivers here with great style, but all those Wildean epigrams and cynical wit he has to speak make his character tedious and predictable. Too much cleverness. Hurd Hatfield is the odd card. He had an almost frozen face. Little emotion shows. There is something about his mouth and lower face that reminds me of a well- preserved Egyptian mummy. For my money, this look makes Dorian Gray a very off character, and it adds immensely to the movie's odd watchability.
If Hollywood's idea of what it takes to show literary culture in a movie (think of Hardwicke's narration), endless witticisms from Oscar Wilde and three-strip Technicolor in a black-and- white movie for showing a corrupt portrait appeals to you, you may enjoy this glossy potboiler. The movie's Hollywood cultural pretentiousness makes it worth watching at least once. I enjoyed its oddness and George Sanders' skill with a nasty, witty line. If you really have a taste for what some innocents might say are corrupt paintings, but great ones nonetheless, watch Love Is the Devil. It's sort of the story of the great British painter Francis Bacon, played by Derek Jacobi. Then look up some of Bacon's paintings. Be warned; Bacon didn't do sunset landscapes of deer looking over forest waterfalls.
Says Lord Henry (George Sanders) to the impressionable young man, "There's no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral. The aim of life is self-development, to realize one's nature perfectly. That's what we're here for. A man should live out his life fully and completely, give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream. There's only one way to get rid of a temptation and that's to yield to it. Resist it, and the soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself. There's nothing that cures the soul but the senses, just as there is nothing that cures the senses but the soul." If we haven't gotten the idea yet, during this turgid bit of life philosophy, Lord Henry is at the same time using paint alcohol to carefully kill the butterfly he had captured in his hat.
And before you know it, Dorian Gray (Hurd Hatfield) decides he never wants to age and wants to explore all those temptations he's heard about. It's not long before the portrait changes a bit, so he puts it in his attic. While Gray experiences the delights of debauchery, and the special delights of debauching others, Angela Lansbury shows up, excellently, as the tragic Sibyl Vane. Donna Reed also shows up as a young woman being groomed by Hollywood for star roles. Lansbury, 20 years old, doesn't need the Hollywood grooming. She's strikingly good. And Dorian Gray never ages. But, oh, does that hidden portrait show a man we'd never want to meet in a dark side street, or, for that matter, in broad daylight...leering, cankerous, face aflame with corrupt poisons, pustules leaking vile fluid, aching to caress and tear tender, uncorrupted flesh. Wow! But fate and justice will have its way. Dorian Gray finds a slender chance at redemption, and even Lord Henry, when he sees the result of his philosophy of life, looks taken aback. Just to remind us how serious this story is, we also have Cedric Hardwicke speaking a narrative. It's just as unconsciously amusing as Herbert Marshall's narrative in The Razor's Edge.
The Picture of Dorian Gray is lush, earnest melodrama, tinged with the kind of oh-my- goodness-horror that polite society might say holds a moral lesson. The movie isn't as overpoweringly pretentious as Lewin's Pandora and the Flying Dutchman. That one could have derailed James Mason's and Ava Gardner's careers if Mason hadn't been such a good actor and Gardner such a force of female nature.
The movie is driven by Lord Henry's philosophy and the depiction of what that philosophy will lead to. George Sanders was never better than when he could drip cynicism like a beaker filled to the brim with acid. He delivers here with great style, but all those Wildean epigrams and cynical wit he has to speak make his character tedious and predictable. Too much cleverness. Hurd Hatfield is the odd card. He had an almost frozen face. Little emotion shows. There is something about his mouth and lower face that reminds me of a well- preserved Egyptian mummy. For my money, this look makes Dorian Gray a very off character, and it adds immensely to the movie's odd watchability.
If Hollywood's idea of what it takes to show literary culture in a movie (think of Hardwicke's narration), endless witticisms from Oscar Wilde and three-strip Technicolor in a black-and- white movie for showing a corrupt portrait appeals to you, you may enjoy this glossy potboiler. The movie's Hollywood cultural pretentiousness makes it worth watching at least once. I enjoyed its oddness and George Sanders' skill with a nasty, witty line. If you really have a taste for what some innocents might say are corrupt paintings, but great ones nonetheless, watch Love Is the Devil. It's sort of the story of the great British painter Francis Bacon, played by Derek Jacobi. Then look up some of Bacon's paintings. Be warned; Bacon didn't do sunset landscapes of deer looking over forest waterfalls.