The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)

After reading Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, I thought I'd take a look at a couple of film adaptations. The most famous is the 1945 film, directed by Albert Lewin, that made Hurd Hatfield a kind of punchline in movie history. I wonder how many people asked him if he had a portrait in an attic somewhere.

The film is a good one, with well-paced suspense, but has some notable and understandable differences from the novel. Hatfield is the title character, a kind of angelic young gentlemen. His portrait is painted by his friend (Lowell Gilmore) and, after hearing the philosophy of man-about-town Henry Wotton (George Sanders, absolutely perfect) that youth is the most important thing one can have, Hatfield idly wishes that he could stay the same, but the portrait would age. The film adds an Egyptian cat statue, which acts as the talisman that grants Hatfield his wish.

A big difference between the film and the book is the removal of any shred of homoerotic love between the painter and subject. Gilmore plays Hallward as a kind of no-nonsense fellow, while Hallward in the book is obsessed with Gray's good looks. Also, Sybil Vane (played here by Angela Lansbury, who won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Oscar) is not a Shakespearean actress, but a singer in a vaudeville. Instead of Hatfield turning on her for her loss of talent, she instead fails a morality test that Sanders suggests.

These changes don't upset the core nature of the film, and the ability to see the portrait in its decadent state is thrilling. The film is in black and white, but shots of the portrait, both before and after, are in a kind of lurid technicolor. The "after" portrait was done by Ivan Le Lorrain Albright, and now is housed at the Art Institute of Chicago.

My only gripe with the movie is the addition of an unnecessary love triangle between Hatfield, Donna Reed as Hallward's niece, and Peter Lawford as her suitor.