I Watch Films: The Secret Of Dorian Gray

The Secret Of Dorian Gray

Dorian Grey is a very beautiful young man who has his portrait painted by Basil Hallward, and also falls in love with an actress, Sibyl Vane. After seeing Dorian and the painting Henry Wotton and his sister Gwendolyn introduce him to their decadent world. Meanwhile Sibyl, falling in love with Dorian, loses all her acting ability as she only cares for Dorian and not for acting. They argue and Sibyl kills herself. Dorian discovers that the painting has changed and looks like the kind of man who would drive his lover to suicide; he himself remains unchanged.

Dorian embarks on a career of (mostly) sexual license and decadence, losing some of the weirder aspects of his pursuit of beauty from the novel, but on the other hand the film is able to put some queerer aspects hinted at on the screen. Swings, roundabouts. Eventually Dorian meets his doom at his own hand, though again the details are a change from the story.

The story takes place over presumably 18 years (from some internal evidence and taking Wilde as the model) though the styles are very 60s throughout. My eye for fashion was not good enough to decide if they tried to move them through time; the tendency for the women to be in impractical formal display clothes and/or lingerie not helping. At least one character quotes Oscar Wilde but presumably The Picture Of Dorian Gray does not exist in the world of the film.

Watch This: For an early 70s sexy Dorian Grey film
Don’t Watch This: If a middle section of wandering around being occasionally slightly witty and having sex sounds like a drag