Movie · 1945 · Drama, Horror, Fantasy · 1h 51m · NR · English
Curator score: 5.9/10 (16.2K ratings)
Why did women talk about Dorian Gray in whispers?
Overview
A corrupt young man somehow keeps his youthful beauty, but a special painting gradually reveals his inner ugliness to all.
Ratings
Curator score: 5.9/10
IMDb: 7.5/10
Rotten Tomatoes: 94%
Metacritic: 65
TMDB: 7.2/10
Director
Albert Lewin
Production
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Cast
Hurd Hatfield, George Sanders, Donna Reed, Angela Lansbury, Peter Lawford, Lowell Gilmore, Richard Fraser, Douglas Walton, Morton Lowry, Miles Mander, Lydia Bilbrook, Mary Forbes, Robert Greig, Moyna MacGill, Billy Bevan, Renee Carson, Lilian Bond, Devi Dja, John George, William Holmes
Curator Review
Verdict
A stylish, eerie adaptation that still lands as a vivid morality tale, with a standout use of color for the portrait and a cold, memorable central performance. It’s condensed and a bit choppy, but the atmosphere, visual invention, and Gothic dread make it easy to recommend.
Best for
classic horror fans
Oscar Wilde adaptations
Gothic melodrama lovers
viewers interested in early color effects
fans of moral-corruption stories
Skip if
you want a fully faithful adaptation
you prefer fast-paced plotting
you dislike old studio-era acting styles
you need overtly queer subtext brought to the surface
Overview
Albert Lewin’s 1945 version of The Picture of Dorian Gray is elegant, strange, and more unsettling than its polished surfaces suggest. The black-and-white photography, then the sudden eruption of color for the portrait, gives the film a genuinely uncanny charge that still works decades later. It feels like a studio-era Gothic tale that knows exactly when to become a nightmare.
Worth noting
Hurd Hatfield plays Dorian with a chilly, almost insect-like detachment that suits the character’s moral vacancy. The film trims and rearranges Wilde’s novel, so it can feel episodic or compressed, but the atmosphere is strong enough to carry the omissions. George Sanders adds a sly, poisonous wit that helps the movie feel less like a museum piece and more like a decadent warning.
Bottom line
This is best approached as a mood piece and a showcase for visual storytelling rather than a definitive literary adaptation. If you want the full complexity and subversive bite of Wilde’s book, you may leave wanting more. If you want a handsome, haunted classic with one of the great “portrait reveal” effects in horror cinema, it delivers.
Top Letterboxd reviews
eely (3★) · 700 likes
twinks SHOULD live forever
nina (3★) · 519 likes
much straighter than anticipated :/ feeling: betrayed
Jaime 🏳️🌈✨ (3★) · 445 likes
So obviously this is objectively way better than the 2009 adaptation but this one also doesn't have Dorian kiss Basil at a sex party so really which is truly superior
Hesse (4★) · 384 likes
When it showed the painting I lost my shit. Also so funny when he reads the poem and says “it was written by a brilliant Irishman out of oxford named Oscar Wilde” lol
evilbjork (3★) · 250 likes
I just know everyone in the audience in 1945 was blown away when it revealed Dorian Gray's portrait and it was in color. I mean, even 80 years after its release, I was impressed by that.