Daily Archives: December 22, 2014

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)

Posted on December 22, 2014 | 2 comments

The Picture of Dorian Gray
Directed by Albert Lewin
Written by Albert Lewin based on the novel by Oscar Wilde
1945/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

 

[box] Lord Henry Wotton: “If I could get back my youth, I’d do anything in the world except get up early, take exercise or be respectable.”[/box]

Oscar Wilde’s novel gets the MGM treatment. Features the quintessential George Sanders performance and a very sweet bit by Angela Lansbury.

Dorian Gray (Hurd Hatfield) is a callow, impressionable but beautiful youth when Lord Henry Wotton (Sanders) spots him sitting for his portrait being painted by his artist friend.  Wotton promptly starts filling the boy with aesthetic ideas about living for the moment during the few years allowed by youth.  Dorian ponders this and says he would give his soul if he could stay young while his portrait aged.  We soon find out that his wish has been granted.

Dorian starts out small by chasing innocent music hall singer Sybil Vane (Lansbury) and asking her to marry him.  Wotton convinces him to test her virtue by threatening to abandon her unless she spends the night with him.  She fails the test and he drives her to her suicide.

The story proceeds as Dorian sinks into the depths of some unnamed degradation while maintaining an angelic young exterior. One murder and another suicide later, Dorian escapes vengeance by Sybil’s brother.  The one good deed of his life will prove to be not marrying his cousin Gladys Hallward (Donna Reed).  With Peter Lawford as Gladys’s admirer and Sir Cedric Hardwick narrating the tale.

This movie works well for me until Angela Lansbury leaves it about half way through. Then, despite the more lurid goings on in the second half, it kind of runs out of steam.  I blame in part Lewin’s insistence that Hatfield maintain a completely blank expression.  It is just impossible to either care what happens to him or to really hate him.  The production values are what one would expect from MGM.  Hearing George Sanders spout cynical bon mots non-stop is worth the price of admission.

The DVD has a good commentary from a film scholar and Lansbury.

The Picture of Dorian Gray won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (Harry Stradling Sr.).  (We get some flashes of color at different reveals of the portrait.)  Angela Lansbury was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar and the film was nominated for Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWwLuepw3G4

Trailer

 

 

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Posted in 1945

The Clock (1945)

Posted on December 22, 2014 | Leave a comment

The Clock
Directed by Vincente Minnelli
Written by Robert Nathan and Joseph Schrank from a story by Paul and Pauline Gallico
1945/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

 

[box] Alice Maybery: Sometimes when a girl dates a soldier she isn’t only thinking of herself. She knows he’s alone and far away from home and no one to talk to and… What are you staring at?[/box]

A poem.  Judy Garland never looked more beautiful than in the hands of her husband-to-be and Robert Walker is swooningly tender.  Sort of like a Brief Encounter with hope.

This is the simple story of a boy and girl who meet and fall in love in the big city, made more urgent by the fact that he is a soldier on perhaps his last leave before leaving for the front.  It is Sunday.  Corporal Joe Allen (Walker) is a lonely, small-town boy in New York City for the first time.  While kindly, random strangers are unwilling to chat with him.  Finally, he accidentally trips Alice Maybery and she loses the heel of her shoe.  He helps her to get it repaired and starts to make time.  She is distrustful but agrees to let him accompany her part way home.  The story is full of elisions.  One of my favorites comes here when she says she cannot go with him to Central Park, she absolutely must go home.  Cut to them laughing at seals at the zoo.  Then they go to the museum and stay until closing time.  She has a date that night and they part.  Joe catches up with her bus and she agrees to meet him under the clock at the Astor.

When Alice gets home, it looks like her roommate convinces her that it is insane to go out with a soldier she has essentially picked up in the street when she doesn’t even know his last name.  But the next cut is to the Astor and Alice is only five minutes late for her rendezvous.

The remainder of the film follows the development of their love, a harrowing separation,  and finally their desperate attempt to marry before Joe must catch his train.  With James Gleason as a kindly milkman.

I think this is just about perfect for what it is.  Despite what could seem a contrived plot, the lovers and their emotions seem very really to me.  I absolutely love Walker in this.  The look on his face in the moments up to their first kiss are almost unbearably sincere.  Poor guy was still recovering from David Selznik’s successful blitzkrieg campaign to steal wife Jennifer Jones from him.  Highly recommended.

I think this film got robbed at Oscar time.  I would have given at least nominations for most everything.  The technical aspects are quite beautiful and its New York is awe-inspiring for something filmed strictly on the MGM lot.  Penn Station never looked better.  The score is wonderful.  The National Board of Review did name The Clock one of the top ten films of 1945, however.

Trailer

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Posted in 1945, Movie Reviews