NR | 1 h 50 min | Drama | 1945
Few films portray truth’s triumph over falsehood as well as screenwriter-director Albert Lewin’s film does. Based on Oscar Wilde’s novel of the same name, the fairytale-like narrative of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” critiques narcissism enshrined in falsehood: a seemingly unchanging life of virtue in public, but a hidden life of vice in private.
In 1886 London, three friends philosophize about life. Basil Hallward (Lowell Gilmore), finishing a portrait of handsome, young Dorian Gray (Hurd Hatfield), warns Gray against being swayed by the narcissism of Lord Henry Wotton (George Sanders), to whom natural (truthful) aging is a curse and artificial (deceptive) sustenance of youth is a blessing.
Struck by Wotton’s smug intellectualism, Gray wishes for an inversion of reality: perpetual youthfulness for himself, and aging for his portrait. His wish, expressed in the presence of an Egyptian cat statue supposedly imbued with magical power, takes on ominous tones when it’s fulfilled. He stays bright and ageless, yet shallow. His portrait ages, turning dark, layered, and hideous.
Gray’s adopted narcissism spurns his friends, including the love of his life: trusting tavern-singer Sibyl Vane (Angela Lansbury). Withering under his disdain, Vane commits suicide in despair, and her brother, who’s out for revenge, dies mysteriously, as does Hallward who detests what his friend is becoming.
Through it all, Gray’s conceit doesn’t show on his person but only on his portrait, which he protects from prying eyes first with a shroud and then away in an upper room under lock and key. Importantly, Gray, too, detests what he’s becoming.
Later, Hallward’s niece Gladys (Donna Reed) falls for the still-young Gray, but he breaks up with her to spare her the tragedy of marrying someone so selfish: To his surprise, he can care for someone other than himself. Immediately, Gray notices his cloistered portrait brightening, as if rekindling that lost spark of selfless love in him.
But life’s deeds aren’t done with a mere swipe of paintbrush on canvas, any more than they’re undone by another swipe, no matter how redemptive in intent.
Lewin uses paintings to mimic Gray’s metamorphosis. Portuguese artist Henrique Medina painted him untainted, and American artist Ivan Le Lorraine Albright painted him decaying. Lewin uses Chopin’s Prelude No. 24 in D minor and Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata, played by Gray on the piano, to reflect Gray’s mirthful or melancholic moods. Although Lewin shot in black-and-white, watch for his spare but startling use of technicolor.
Traditions of Self-Denial
Wilde’s 1890 novel mirrors the fears and hopes of his generation as they approached the dawn of a new century.First, Gray childishly hopes to preserve the status quo, choosing to be trapped in the present, suffocated by his exaggerated fear of the future because it promises both aging and death. Then, he learns that only a fiercely moral and mature defiance of indulgences can negotiate the past, present, and future. His nervous clutching at a frozen present rings false because it’s exclusionary, rejecting both a blessed past and a promising future.
Here, Wilde and Lewin denounce sensory materialism.
Hallward hopes that ancient spiritual traditions of self-denial will expose Wotton’s trendy talk of hedonism. He hopes that Gray will humbly accept the truth about himself: He’s a fragile human who ages and dies as others do, and his beauty lies not in looking good but in loving and being loved. At one point, Hallward expectantly hands Gray a book on the Buddha, which upholds the virtues of truth and detachment but warns of the fates of those driven by their desires and deceptions.
Trudging alone through London’s deserted streets at night, Gray overhears a preacher telling a crowd that “the soul is not a superstition, nor the spirit of man a material substance that can be viewed under a microscope.” The preacher recalls the biblical verse that wonders if it ever makes sense for a man to win the whole world but to lose his soul. He goes on to clarify that the soul is not an illusion–it can be bought and bartered away, poisoned, or made perfect—but the man who has “faith and charity within” can enjoy the clear light of day, even if he were hurled into darkness.
At another point, Gray touchingly says: “The truth is, I want to be better. I’m determined to be better.”
