Capital Celluloid 2019 - Day 91: Mon Apr 1

The Picture of Dorian Gray (Lewin, 1945): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.30pm


This film, which is also being shown on April 17th and 19th, is part of the Big Screen Classics season at BFI Southbank. You can find the full 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 Albert Lewin (best known, perhaps, for Pandora and the Flying Dutchman). Hurd 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 George 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.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

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