The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)

Directed by: Albert Lewin

Starring: George Sanders, Hurd Hatfield, Donna Reed

This is a good story written by a goofy dude with some good jokes, but I just can’t stop thinking about the fact that a young Angela Lansbury is in this film as a love interest. Nothing about that makes any sense. Angela Lansbury? Love interest? YOUNG?!

A young, well-to-do man gets a fine portrait painted of him, and when it’s finished, he makes a wish on it: He wishes that he would never age, that anything that happened to him would instead happen to the portrait, instead of how it would normally be the other way around. Once he realizes this gift has come true, he spends his life being debauched, turning his portrait into a crazy Halloween picture. He finally can’t take the fact that everyone who gets close to him has terrible things happen to them, so he stabs the painting… killing himself and returning the picture to normal.

This is a really classic story, and it’s well-written. I mean, Oscar Wilde was pretty good with words. Still, a big problem with the film is that every character is basically exactly the same, and they all have the exact same voice (except the women, who are basically useless babies). There is a pretty cool part where they finally show the evil painting and it’s in vivid color, as opposed to the black and white of the rest of the film. That was a well-used little trick.