Fresh and Exciting

The acting in this movie is really good.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

It was hard to hear people talking in the movie and the ending was not all that great. The ending was when the main character kicked the picture and did not have the curse anymore he did not even know that would work he was just mad and kicking the picture.

I always hear complaints amongst people of my generation that "old" movies are so boring, which I have to disagree with since a good deal of the greatest films ever made were in the "black and white" era. There are even terrific comedies among these movies including Arsenic and Old Lace and The Apartment. However, there do exist some very boring older movies, and this is one of them.The premise of this movie is great, and I feel the filmmakers could have made something very special with this premise. This Dorian Gray receives a portrait at the beginning of the story, and he makes an observation that he will age while the portrait will conserve his youth, but he makes a "wish" in a sense that the reverse could happen, and what do you know, it does.In a way this story is like the opposite of the popular story Beauty and the Beast: Dorian's corrupt nature is hidden inside his youthful appearance for decades. It is hard to tell when time passes in the film since Dorian never ages while new characters/actors are introduced throughout the film. I did not realize for a while that Donna Reed's character was an older version of a kid at the beginning of the film. The only clear indication that time had passed for me was when somebody states "Dorian Gray has looked 22 for the past twenty years" (not sure if twenty is the correct number).The most interesting segments of this film are the moments when Dorian revisits his portrait to find the picture magically altered to show a hideous beast instead of his youthful self - it illustrates his corrupt soul which nobody can see with the naked eye.Unfortunately, the film feels very long with little excitement happening to entertain the audience. Not every movie needs to be entertaining, and I like "high culture" films, but the thematic content simply did not make up for the slow pace of the film in my opinion.2.5/4.0

A young and innocent man named "Dorian Gray" (Hurd Hatfield) is having his portrait taken by an artist by the name of "Basil Hailward" (Lowell Gilmore) when he happens to make the acquaintance of an aristocrat named "Lord Harry Wotton" (George Sanders). Unfortunately for Dorian, Lord Harry turns out to be an extremely bad influence upon him from the very start and it is during this time that Dorian wishes aloud that his portrait would age instead of himself. Unknown to him, an Egyptian statue of a cat which is supposed to be one of the 73 great gods of Egypt is in the room and it grants Dorian's wish in exchange for his soul. In due time Dorian changes—for the worse. Yet as he changes his portrait proceeds to capture his age and wickedness while he continues to look young and innocent through the years. Now, although this movie was produced in 1945 it still manages to retain much of its horror and intrigue. In that regard I thought both Hurd Hatfield and Lowell Gilmore performed in an excellent manner. On that same note I should probably also mention that Angela Lansbury (as "Sylvia Vane") won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe in a fine supporting role. In short, unlike the portrait, this movie ages quite well and I give it an above average rating.

That's what Hurd Hatfield sets to find out when he makes a deal with the devil to keep his looks as a beautiful picture of him ages to show the true depths of his soul in this version of the Oscar Wilde tail. Dorian Gray is a beautiful man, well liked in society and extremely well mannered and sophisticated. But he's hiding a massive ego, a vanity that can only be considered demon possessed. When an artist paints his picture, he seems to fall in love with the image of himself, and the initially sensitive man becomes more sinister, that taking immediate shape in the mouth on the portrait. An innocent singer (Angela Lansbury) is his first victim, lead down the path of degradation by his insistence she spend the night with him, and this "Little Yellow Bird" is the cause of his picture to grow a sinister quality to it that looks like one of the devil's minions on earth. Dorian isn't aided by his society snob friend (George Sanders) who is amused by the fact that while everybody else around them ages (including himself), Dorian does not. Dorian's great love for fellow socialite Donna Reed leads to an engagement, but Dorian is hiding a life of degradation (which includes possible homosexual liaisons, subtly shown) that make for an obvious conclusion.You could read a lot of themes into what Oscar Wilde has written, and while the film version is slightly different than his book, the general themes still remain. Wilde expresses the viewpoint that vanity leads to destruction, a gentle flower will die if picked too soon (Lansbury's character), and that evil can be found, even in beauty. Hatfield sometimes underplays his character's high class sophistication a bit too much, and as the character ages and gets more sinister, he actually seems like he is already dead, yet still walking through a world he has become doomed on. Sanders offers a droll performance, very much a pre-cursor to his later triumph as Addison De Witt in "All About Eve". But this film will always be remembered for Lansbury's sweet young maiden who is destroyed too soon, a great follow-up to a much different part that she played in the previous year's "Gaslight".