DORIAN GRAY (1970)

This 1970's update of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray follows the original plot (using the same character names) fairly well. The young and handsome playboy Dorian Gray has his portrait painted by high society artist Basil Hallward. Art dealer (and general bad influence) Henry Wotten encourages Dorian to live a life of giving into temptation while he's young before he turns into "an old and hideous puppet." Dorian takes that advice and wishes out loud that he would stay young and his portrait would grow old instead. Over the years, Dorian becomes a decadent wastrel but remains beautiful while everyone else ages. Wilde leaves most of Dorian's immoral actions unclear, but he leads women to ruin and eventually commits murder. In the end, he slashes up his painting which has become ugly then drops dead; when he's found, his body is old and ugly but the painting again is beautiful. This version, which was promoted as almost softcore porn, would seem to be able to make more explicit what Dorian's decadence consists of, and it does a bit—in addition to ruining women, he ruins some men as well (and has what seems to be a one-off encounter in the shower with Henry, after he's slept with Henry's wife). But though there is some nudity, there is nothing even approaching porn here. The beautiful Austrian actor Helmut Berger is absolutely right in terms of looks as Dorian, but he's too restrained in his performance, just as Hurd Hatfield was back in the 1945 MGM version. The cheap looking portrait features a shirtless Berger in hip-hugging jeans which fails to capture any of Berger's beauty. 

Dorian's first step toward evil, as in the book, is his casual acceptance and rejection of young actress Sybil Vane—when he first sleeps with her, she's a virgin—and she falls so hard for him that her acting suffers. When Dorian sees how bad her performance in Romeo and Juliet is, he cuts her loose, causing her to kill herself, an act about which Dorian feels nothing. The character's gay side, which is only hinted at in the book, is a bit more clearly drawn here, but generally we still have to take the word of others that Dorian has become mad, bad and dangerous to know. Herbert Lom (pictured with Berger) is quite good as Henry, if not quite as good as George Sanders was in 1945, and he gets a handful of Wilde quotations to spout, though not nearly enough to come off as especially witty. Richard Todd is fine as Basil and Marie Liljedahl makes a decent updated Sybil. An actor named Stuart Black is fine as Sybil's brother but he did not go on to an acting career. The look of the film is problematic; though many years are supposed to pass, the whole movie looks like it's set in the mid-sixties. For some reason, the ending here is changed. Instead of stabbing the portrait and falling dead, he stabs himself and falls dead before the restored portrait. I agree with the critics who wish this had been a sleazier feeling movie. Because Dorian mostly remains a handsome cipher, we don't much get concerned with his journey. Aka The Secret of Dorian Gray. [YouTube]