Capital Celluloid 2014 - Day 16: Thu Jan 16

The Picture of Dorian Gray (Lewin, 1945): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 6.10pm



This film, which screens as part of the BFI Gothic season, is also being shown on Saturday January 18th. Details here.

Time Out review:
Generally underrated version of Oscar Wilde's Faustian tale about a young Victorian gentleman who sells his soul to retain his youth, directed with loving care by the equally underrated Lewin (best known, perhaps, for Pandora and the Flying Dutchman). Hatfield - cool, beautiful, and effortlessly suggesting the corruptibility of Dorian's dark soul - is excellent, though even he is overshadowed by the cynical, epigrammatic brilliance of Sanders as Lord Henry. With elegant fin de siècle sets superbly shot by Harry Stradling, and the ironic Wildean wit understated rather than overplayed, it's that rare thing: a Hollywoodian literary adaptation that both stays faithful and does justice to its source.
Geoff Andrew

Here (and above) is the trailer.

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