Review – The Picture of Dorian Gray

This is a worthy production of Oscar Wilde’s thought-provoking tale about the consequences of evil, though naturally it deviates from the novel here and there. It’s an interesting thing to watch. For starters, close-ups of the painting itself suddenly switch from black and white to color, a cheap trick but one that works. But more than that, there seem to be big chunks missing from the story. I don’t know much about the history of the production, but I wonder if maybe the Hays Office didn’t have something to do with the vague treatment and/or total extraction of Gray’s more “perverted” conduct. In particular, the sideways references to homosexuality are entertaining for their strangeness alone. Though it drags a bit in parts and tends to be a bit over-sentimental, it nonetheless holds up as a solid piece of writing transformed into a worthwhile piece of cinema. Worth seeing