The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)

The Picture of Dorian Gray takes some rather considerable liberties with its acclaimed source material, the Victorian novel by Oscar Wilde. The title character, played with just one consistent facial expression by Hurd Hatfield, never ages in appearance, but his image in a life-size portrait not only grows older, it becomes hideous and gruesome, a sign of his moral decay. While the novel is a bit more ambiguous in the cause of this transference of the aging process, the film gives credit to Dorian’s wish to remain forever youthful being made in the presence of an ancient Egyptian cat-goddess statue, and that’s just as ridiculous as it sounds. Lord Henry Wotton (George Sanders at the height of his witty and urbane powers) advocates a hedonistic, pleasure-driven lifestyle to Dorian but then bemoans that only the young and beautiful are able to enjoy such an approach to life. It’s his advice to Dorian that sets into motion the transformation. The film doesn’t show all of the behaviors that cause Dorian to become an outcast in the upper-class society into which he was born, but the implication is that it is frequently sexual in nature. Angela Lansbury as musical hall performer Sibyl Vane and Donna Reed as the portrait painter’s niece Gladys play the two love interests whom Dorian pursues, and both of them, still early in their film careers, show the level of pain that his treatment of women causes. Their performances bookend the film’s portrayal of Dorian’s moral descent, and both actresses show signs here of why they would have long, illustrious careers. Despite these two failed attempts at heterosexual relationships, Dorian remains a bachelor throughout his life, and the film (given when it was made) is unable to make much of the homoerotics of the novel’s depiction of Dorian the aesthete. You have to wonder what Sanders could have done with the gay/queer implications of the novel had he been young enough to play the title role. The most the film is able to show us of his supposed decadence is the lushness of his surroundings, the excess and abundance of antiques and music and other signs of an “artistic sensibility.” (By the way, while on the subject of art, both versions of Dorian’s portrait, the original painted by his friend Basil Hallward and the ever-changing one that he hides in a locked room on the top floor of his mansion, are spectacular, and the film’s use of four strategically placed color inserts truly heightens their impact.) Additionally, what might have been an opportunity to reinforce the mental transformation that Dorian undergoes—anything to add some depth to the wooden performance Hurtfield gives—the voiceover narration, done by the great Cedric Hardwicke, instead comes across as intrusive and quite distracting. Overall, the film is not a successful adaptation, but then it couldn’t have been easy to translate the book given the restrictions of the Production Code in the 1940s.

Oscar Win: Best Black-and-White Cinematography

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Angela Lansbury) and Best Black-and-White Art Direction-Interior Decoration