User Reviews

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY is one of many classic horror stories that producer Dan Curtis adapted for US television back in the early 1970s. It's a pretty authentic version of the Oscar Wilde novel that feels interesting throughout, despite the dated atmosphere and cheap look. Running at two hours, this is a fairly slow and ponderous story, bolstered by an excellent performance from underrated Hammer star Shane Briant in the leading role. He gets under his character's skin and convinces totally, with Nigel Davenport excellent in support as the debauched Sir Harry. The film has just the right creepy atmosphere and the titular portrait is well used and sufficiently horrible. It's a good film, if you can get past the relatively low budget.

Orginally airing on April 22, 1973 on ABC, this Dan Curtis-produced adaption of the Oscar Wilde book was like going back to the Dark Shadows well. After all, Quentin Collins also had a portrait that had kept him immortal. He was born Grant Douglas in 1870 and if you reverse those initials, you get the same ones as Dorian Gray.

It was written by John Tomerlin who was the scribe for the Twilight Zone episode "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" as well as episodes of Thriller. Glenn Jordan directed and you may remember him from the Kim Milford-starring TV movie Song of the Succubus.

Shane Briant (Demons of the Mind, Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter, Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, Hawk the Slayer) is the perfect Dorian Gray, at once sure of his actions and the other yearning to escape from his life of sin.

Charles Aidman, who worked for Curtis in The Invasion of Carol Enders and as the narrator oofWhen Every Day Was the Fourth of July, appears, as does William Beckley (Gerard the butler from Dynasty), Nigel Davenport (No Blade of Grass), Vanessa Howard (Some Girls Do), Linda Kelsey (TV's Lou Grant), a very young Kim Richards (when she wasn't escaping Witch Mountain or getting shot outside Precinct 13 as a child, she was falling in love with Mr. Gray) and Curtis favorite John Karlen, who played Willie Loomis on Dark Shadows.

This is a mannered take on the story, so don't expect much excitement. But there are a few really great scenes between Davenport and Briant. It's worth a watch.

Within the first 5 minutes of watching this version of "The Picture of Dorian Gray," I knew it had to be by the same people who had done "Dark Shadows" (DS)! I'm going on 49, and my "Younger-Slice-of-the-Baby-Boom" credentials are solid regarding having been addicted to DS. I laughed out loud when confirmation of the DS connection arose from hearing "Angelique's Theme," and another DS melody I recognized–used as music being performed at gatherings of London's elite. All such DS touches amused but also distracted me, I must say. Another distraction was the use of several key story changes used in the 1945 MGM version. Noting these changes–along with the feeling that the bits of dialogue preserved from Wilde's novel (i.e., Lord Henry's clever sayings) were those that were in the MGM version, made me wonder if the writer had read the original work at all or had just worked from the MGM screenplay! Finally, in the 2 weeks prior to viewing this, I'd watched a 1976 BBC adaption (w/ Sir John Gielgud marvelous as Lord Henry), the MGM film & read the novel for the 1st time. One thing I'll give this one, I appreciated its versions of the changes in Dorian's eponymous "Picture" the most.

He who does not know Oscar Wilde is just uneducated. He who does not know Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray" is just half human. And any film adapted from Oscar Wilde's stories and plays are a must for any man in this world. I did say man because Oscar Wilde is talking to men about men, and even when he is dealing with women he is addressing men as his privileged audience.

Oscar Wilde was at least bisexual and being Irish and not of noble extract, his gay adventure with the son of an English Lord cost him several years in the prison of Reading. More for than "perverting" the son of a lord and future lord himself, and that son remained attached to Oscar Wilde and his work till the end of his life, Oscar Wilde was punished because of the social line of nobility he crossed up, which was unacceptable at the time in England, and will be till the 1980s or so. What's more he dared cross the national divide from Irish to English in his sexual love life and that was a tremendously lot less acceptable than trespassing the first nobility divide, and probably still is or was till at least the beginning of the 21st century.

So this film has to be seen as a fundamental film as for dealing with "perversion" and "perdition" in English society. The film is discrete about the gay side of things, but a long list of men are said toward the end of the film to refuse to have anything to do any more with Dorian Gray or to step out of a room when Dorian Gray steps in it. That discretion is not important anyway since what is at stake is a lot more than just gayness.

Dorian Gray is young, about 20 at the beginning, and rich, at the beginning again since he will grow poor as years go by. He will be 41 at the end. During those 20 years or so he will do all the villainies and treacheries you can imagine, with women or with men, among other things breaking the hearts of women and leading them to their death or plainly killing men or blackmailing some others like the professor and doctor he uses to get rid of the corpse of his last victim, using the professor's liking men to force him to do something absolutely unethical and make him his accomplice in this crime.

But the appealing and disquieting knack of the novel and the film is the fact that the picture that was done by a famous painter when Dorian Gray was 20 leads Dorian to wishing the painting to age while he himself does not. So at age 41 he is still looking the way he did when 20 and the portrait, hidden away from public view is aging for one and changing in agreement with the horrors Dorian Gray does.

At the end what has to happen happens: Dorian Gray wants to destroy the painting and instead it is him who dies and the curse on the painting reverts itself and Dorian Gray when dead looks his age and carries his horrendous soul ugliness on his face.

But the film reduced to this story line is in fact rather simple and would at best be a horror short story, and in fact was used several times here and there in horror literature. This film and the story behind are not horror literature but deep ethical literature. Oscar Wilde denounces the hypocrisy of English society: "The value of an idea has nothing to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it." One can utter the most profound moral statements and yet be the most rotten character on earth. His rotten nature does not in any way degrade the ethical value of the moral statements he proclaims.

In simple words "those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril." The real theme of the novel is the fact that the surface of things means nothing and that the true nature of a man is beneath his appearance. Note the well chosen "beneath." Oscar Wilde is careful not to use "behind" that would not mean a lower level or state. For Oscar Wilde the social world is a superficial appearance and a lower true reality. The appearance is the top surface of things and truth is necessarily underneath. The aristocracy that is at the top of society does not hide a shadow that is at their level but hides an ugliness that is necessarily deep under that aristocratic top surface. Aristocratic societies are necessarily hypocritical and pushing their roots in some deep mud or filth.

Though this is the fundamental idea in the story, Oscar Wilde cannot resist expressing another one he borrowed from Shakespeare. "Time is jealous of you. Time will have his revenge." This time is the time Shakespeare describes and despises in his sonnets but with a Macbethian dimension to it. Time is the all leveller but by bringing everything superior down into the muddy pit of human manure.

I will only regret one thing about this film. The actor who plays Dorian Gray is slightly stiff and not directed into some kind of real attractiveness. He may be handsome but he is also tremendously cold or artificial.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU