Oscar Wilde’s great novel The Picture of Dorian Gray has already been made into a film, the subtle 1945 classic starring Hurd Hatfield in the title role and George Sanders as his personal Mephisto, Lord Henry. The most recent rendition, just called Dorian Gray (out now on Blu-ray and DVD), is no classic But although rigged up with the computer-generated conventions of contemporary horror, and even a redemptive Hollywood love angle, the remake has a few points in its favor, starting with the performances by Ben Barnes as Gray and Colin Firth as Lord Henry.
The new movie images Gray as a naïve young provincial who inherits a fortune and falls into bad company. Lord Henry is an epigram-dropping wit with a philosophy of heartless hedonism. He extols living beyond good and evil. His irresponsible yet seductive sophistry is embraced a bit too literally by young Gray, who leaves death and ruin in his wake. Barnes depicts Gray as a pale, dashing figure of Gothic mystery and Firth keeps Lord Henry intriguingly tightly corked. Of course, there is the matter of that portrait, which mysteriously assumes a life of its own—an evil entity prodding the sometimes conscious-wracked Gray onward to greater depravity.
Dorian Gray shows the London demimonde of prostitution and opium dens that its ‘40s predecessor could only hint at, albeit the many orgies are closer to the literary imagination of de Sade than Wilde. The point of the author rings through clearly enough: pleasure is not the same as happiness and a life without limits is a life of destruction.
