A faithful plod through Oscar Wilde's Victorian shocker. Nearly eighty years after it was originally written, the time was uniquely ripe during the sybaritic pre-AIDS early seventies for a film version of Wilde's original that fully did justice to its florid homoeroticism (although the early seventies quickly ended, while the period during which young Dorian remains eternally youthful lasts much longer in this telling).
Despite being shot in London with a couple of reputable British-based actors leading the supporting cast (Herbert Lom's Henry Wotton looks an unlikely 'Daily Mirror' reader, despite being depicted immersed in a copy at one point), the constant vertiginous zooms and obviously post-synced dialogue symptomatic of the era in which it was made definitely enhances its continental-style depiction of the joyless hedonism of the milieu Wilde was really writing about and renders it far more dated than had it actually been set in the 1890s.
Despite being shot in London with a couple of reputable British-based actors leading the supporting cast (Herbert Lom's Henry Wotton looks an unlikely 'Daily Mirror' reader, despite being depicted immersed in a copy at one point), the constant vertiginous zooms and obviously post-synced dialogue symptomatic of the era in which it was made definitely enhances its continental-style depiction of the joyless hedonism of the milieu Wilde was really writing about and renders it far more dated than had it actually been set in the 1890s.