The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)

Hurd Hatfield sells his soul so that his portrait ages and reflects his evil while he stays young in "The Picture of Dorian Gray," based on the classic novel by Oscar Wilde. The film also stars George Sanders, Angela Lansbury, Donna Reed, and Peter Lawford. After wishing to stay young forever and falling prey to the words of a cynical friend, Gray goes against what might have been a decent nature and embarks on a vicious life that brings cruelty, sadness, and even death to those with whom he interacts.

The film is striking for several reasons: There is very little of what one would call action; many scenes are quite short; the film relies heavily on narration; the leading man's face remains impassive throughout. This could have been a recipe for disaster, but instead, "The Picture of Dorian Gray" is an extremely compelling film. This sumptuous production is meticulously photographed, with wonderful use of shadows which help create a dark atmosphere. The performances are excellent, particularly those of a very young Angela Lansbury and George Sanders. Peter Lawford and Donna Reed are the beautiful young things who don't have to depend on a portrait for youth.

Hurd Hatfield surely had one of the strangest faces in film - he certainly looked the part of a young, almost pretty Englishman, with his unlined face, high cheekbones, and full lips. As the role dictates, he was appropriately detached and lacking emotion. Six or seven years earlier, this role would have been perfect for Tyrone Power, who would have imbued it with more charm - making the evil inside Dorian all the more difficult to accept among his friends, and thus, his true personality would have seemed more treacherous. Given the way Hatfield played it, I had no problem believing he was capable of anything, and wondered why his friends didn't buy the nasty rumors.

As for the portrait - what a concept. Would that we all had one in our closets. It would put plastic surgeons out of business.

Fmovies: The Picture Of Dorian Gray is an adaptation of Oscar Wilde's novel, and captures the tone of the story nicely but misses something in translation, namely Wilde's remarkable prose. It's a strange tale, about morality and art, with touches of diabolism and the supernatural, exquisitely rendered in language that is both breathtakingly poetic and strangely concrete. I see the story as a kind of fragmented autobiography, with Wilde as both Dorian and his portrait, as well as Basil Hallward, the man who made the painting. He is also, as author of the story, Lord Henry Wotton. Wilde is everywhere in this tale, which is fitting, as vanity is its major theme. The movie misses these delicate subtleties, so crucial to understanding the book, and the result is a genteel horror picture for the carriage trade.

As a horror movie, Dorian Gray has its virtues. The use of a handsome man as the monster, rather than some hideous creature, is in itself a virtue and a novelty. That Dorian's picture grows old as he does not, in conveyed gradually, first through barely noticeable changes in the picture's expressions, then by increased ugliness. I wish that director Albert Lewin had chosen a better painter for these later pictures, which are over the top in their weirdness, and out of keeping with the movie's refined tone. As to Dorian's journeying through the dives and dens of iniquity of late night Victorian London, I wish that these aspects of the story had been either a lot better presented and fleshed out or merely suggested by dialogue. If a movie is going to deal with degeneracy it should either show it or describe it vividly. The film succeeds when dealing with well-bred, upper class types in their fancy homes, but fails to deliver when dealing with the poor and the uneducated.

Hurd Hatfield as Dorian gives a good, cool performance. One is scarcely aware that the actor is American. He is a handsome man, but not so beautiful as the Dorian of the book, and he fails to light up the screen. Peter Lawford, who has a small part in the film, would have been much better, at least physically. George Sanders comes across as even more bored than usual as Lord Henry, and delivers his epigrams and asides with surprisingly little panache, especially given that he had shown himself to be master of this sort of thing on other occasions. Angela Lansbury's performance as the pathetic little cockney singer Dorian goes for, is very fine, though he part seems underwritten.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that director Lewin bungled his job, but the film overall succeeds only with Wilde's mood, not his ideas. This was a wonderful opportunity for Hollywood to take on a classic and give it a spin uniquely its own, as happened with the Sherlock Holmes pictures, the MGM Pride and Prejudice and the Cukor-Selznick David Copperfield. Dorian Gray succeeds well as light entertainment, with a few thrills along the way, but it never really soars or comes to life or catches the audience by surprise.

The key word for this movie is elegance. The cast move through sumptuous sets with the males dressed in immaculately tailored dress suits and the women exquisitely gowned. It seems that all the aristocrats lived in homes the size of Buckingham palace with high ceilinged rooms and magnificent staircases. They exchange Oscar Wilde epigrams in the cultured tones of the British upper classes.

Some great performances. Hurd Hatfield, an extremely handsome actor with a limited range ,gives the best one of his career as does George Sanders as the cynical Lord Henry Wotton, and a young Angela Lansbury is very moving (especially when she sings "The Little Yellow Bird").

One (very small) criticism. The color shots of the Dorian Gray portrait showing his degradation don't match the high standards of the rest of the design, they look more like pages from a horror comic. I think the producer's, with their obviously high budget, could have used a more imaginative artist.

As I say a small criticism. This a great film of psychological horror.

The Picture of Dorian Gray fmovies. The Picture of Dorian Gray is directed by Albert Lewin, and he also adapts the screenplay from the novel written by Oscar Wilde. It stars Hurd Hatfield, George Sanders, Angela Lansbury, Donna Reed, Peter Lawford, Lowell Gilmore, Richard Fraser and Douglas Walton. Music is by Herbert Stothart and cinematography by Harry Stradling Sr.

Dorian Gray of Mayfair and Selby.

Oscar Wilde's Faustian tale about a young Victorian gentleman who sells his soul to retain his youth is given a magnificent make-over by MGM. Pumping into it a budget reputedly of $2 million, the look and feel is perfect for this macabre observation of vanity, greed and self destruction. In many ways it's still an under valued movie, mainly because there will always be Wilde purists who think it lacks the writer's poetic spikiness, while horror fans quite often venture into the picture expecting some sort of violent classic ripe with sex, drugs and debauchery unbound.

Lewin crafts his film in understated manner, never allowing the themes in the source material to become overblown just for dramatic purpose. He cloaks it all with an atmosphere of eeriness, thus keeping the debasing nature of Dorian Gray subdued. The horror aspects here mostly are implied or discussed in elegantly stated conversations, where the horror in fact is purely in the characterisation of Dorian himself. We really don't need to see actual things on screen, we are urged to be chilled to the marrow by his mere presence, and this works because Lewin has personalised us into this man's sinful descent by way of careful pacing and character formation.

There are some jolt moments of course, notably the famous inserts of Technicolor into the black and white film, the impact of such bringing the portrait of the title thundering into our conscious. However, this is not about thrill rides and titillation, because the film, like its source, is intellectual. Lewin is aided considerably by Stradling's beautiful photography, which in turn either vividly realises the opulent abodes or darkens the dens of iniquities, so just like Lewin, Stradling and the art department work wonders and prove to be fine purveyors of their craft.

Hatfield is wonderful, it's an inspired piece of casting, with his angular features and cold dead eyes, he effortlessly suggests the black heart now beating where once there was a soul. Yet even he, and the rest of the impressive cast, are trumped by Sanders as Lord Henry. Cynical, brutal yet rich with witticisms, in Sanders' excellent hands Lord Henry becomes the smiling devil like mentor perched on Dorian's shoulder. Dorian and Lord Henry are movie monsters, proof positive that not all monsters need to be seen hacking off limbs or drinking blood. In this case, the decaying of the soul is a far more terrifying experience.

Fascinating, eloquent, intelligent and frightening. 9/10

Angela Lansbury at her most beautifully, sensuously, and vulnerably innocent!

Although sparse treatment of minor characters and some noticeable deletions from the novel (due to the straight-laced, 1945-ish treatment of certain of Gray's more perverse and debauched atrocities) may be "intrusive" to fans of Wilde's disturbing (but often delightful) descriptions of the more colorful of the late-Victorians' tastes in sensual depravity, this production is a fine example of the careful writing, thoughtful directing, and the control of character Hollywood's artistry could (seldom so successfully) proffer.

Despite George Sanders' somewhat stilted and--in modern terms--"out of the moment" portrayal as the film opens, within ten minutes or so the audience meets the serenely enchanting Hurd Hatfield's rendition of the title character, and the artistry begins. Once Hatfield enters the film the supporting performances become increasingly effective, and the remainder of the production, including Sanders as "Lord Henry," reach almost mythic proportions.

With near-perfection, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) delivers Wilde's portrait of Narcissistic and perfidious sensuality--the delight and desire of the suppressed and decayed late nineteenth-century Victorian elite-- . . . or, . . .

as Sanders quotes Wilde: "To get back my youth, I'll do anything except 'get up early, take exercise, or live respectably.'"

A man sells his soul and the results are tragic, not only for the man but for everyone around him. Yet no one knows that he sold his soul, because on the surface he is quiet, urbane and seemingly respectable, which is what makes this movie so chilling. For who can say what's going on INSIDE a person, below the veneer of civility and social formality? "The Picture of Dorian Gray" deals directly with this question and presents to the viewer a situation involving a man who is emotionally torn apart, and a profound hypocrite as well, yet on the surface seems completely intact. It is only through the picture noted in the title that the viewer finally perceives the depth of Gray's moral corruption, and by then it's too late. The cynical commentary of Lord Henry Wotton adds to the dark and foreboding mood of the movie, as the Wotton character explains what is happening to Dorian as Dorian sinks lower and lower into the abyss from which there is no return. As the saying goes, appearances can be deceiving.