“The Picture of Dorian Gray” is a good example of a 1940’s horror movie at its best. This story of a young man who wishes his aging process and sins to his portrait is captivating, spellbinding, and enthralling. Director-screenwriter Albert Lewin did an outstanding job of adapting the 1890 novel by Oscar Wilde to the big screen.
Hurd Hatfield personified the handsome Dorian Gray, who fell into all kinds of transgressions including murder. The supporting cast includes some fellow youngsters who went on to prominence: Donna Reed, Angela Lansbury, and Peter Lawford. Others include George Sanders, Lowell Gilmore, Richard Fraser, Douglas Watson, and Kay Medford an uncredited role, also early in her career.
The film won a single Academy Award for the marvelous cinematography by Harry Stradling. The black-and-white movie had color “inserts” in Technicolor, whenever Dorian Gray’s portrait appeared, stunning for the 1940’s and even today well into the twenty-first century. Two other Oscar nods went for art direction and for supporting actress (Lansbury). The uncredited narrator was Cedric Hardwicke, whose dignified voice was just one little aspect of “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” a big hit in popular release for producer Pandro S. Berman and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)
cinema
My Review
“The Picture of Dorian Gray” is a good example of a 1940’s horror movie at its best. This story of a young man who wishes his aging process and sins to his portrait is captivating, spellbinding, and enthralling. Director-screenwriter Albert Lewin did an outstanding job of adapting the 1890 novel by Oscar Wilde to the big screen.
Hurd Hatfield personified the handsome Dorian Gray, who fell into all kinds of transgressions including murder. The supporting cast includes some fellow youngsters who went on to prominence: Donna Reed, Angela Lansbury, and Peter Lawford. Others include George Sanders, Lowell Gilmore, Richard Fraser, Douglas Watson, and Kay Medford an uncredited role, also early in her career.
The film won a single Academy Award for the marvelous cinematography by Harry Stradling. The black-and-white movie had color “inserts” in Technicolor, whenever Dorian Gray’s portrait appeared, stunning for the 1940’s and even today well into the twenty-first century. Two other Oscar nods went for art direction and for supporting actress (Lansbury). The uncredited narrator was Cedric Hardwicke, whose dignified voice was just one little aspect of “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” a big hit in popular release for producer Pandro S. Berman and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.