DORIAN GRAY 1970

Playwright Oscar Wilde's only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (published in 1890), has been adapted to film at least ten times, not counting several silent versions and numerous movies made for television. Of these, I've seen a kind of low-rent, Dark Shadows-esque version produced by Dan Curtis in 1973; a visually well-turned-out and significantly altered 2009 British theatrical adaptation for the Twilight generation; and the uniformly excellent 1945 film version which boasts George Sanders playing what is essentially Addison DeWitt five years before there was an Addison DeWitt.

Each film possesses its own unique assortment of assets and liabilities, but by no stretch of the imagination could any be labeled the definitive translation of Wilde's allegory of the corporeal vs. the spiritual. So, being that as far as I know, the definitive adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray has yet to be made, I proffer this, my absolute favorite version of Wilde's oft-told-tale: the irresistibly loopy Dorian Gray - 1970. It is a film that stands head and shoulders above the rest for its appealingly tawdry Eurotrash aesthetics, flawless evocation of Swinging '60s mod, and its flagrant, unabashed sleaze factor.

Loaded with entertainment value every bit as visually exquisite and shallow as its protagonist, Dorian Gray (titled The Secret of Dorian Gray or The Evils of Dorian Gray in Europe) is a deliciously prurient Italian/German collaboration produced by American schlockmeister Samuel Z. Arkoff (the "brains" behind virtually every Beach Party or outlaw motorcycle gang movie made in the '60s) and released through his American International Pictures.

Helmut Berger as Dorian Gray

Herbert Lom as Henry Wotton 

Marie Liljedahl as Sybil Vane / Gladys Mormouth

Richard Todd as Basil Hallward

Margaret Lee as Gwendolyn Wotton

Directed by onetime Sergio Leone cinematographer Massimo Dallamano, Dorian Gray is Oscar Wilde's Victorian Gothic provocatively updated to Swinging Sixties London at the peak of the Sexual Revolution. It remains reasonably faithful to the novel's Faustian plot concerning a handsome young innocent --led down the path of hedonism and debauchery-- whose portrait comes to reflect the decay of his soul, while he himself remains the unsullied ideal of youth and beauty. This Dorian Gray is, in every and all aspects, a Dorian Gray that could only have come out of the late '60s.

Mac Daddy Dorian

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

There is something conceptually so perfect about positing Dorian Gray smack in the middle of the youth-obsessed '60s. Removed from the wholesale repression and prudery of Victorian-era morality, this particular incarnation proposes what seems to me to be a far more compelling question: When arbitrary ethical judgments of good and bad are replaced with the freedom to do what one wishes in a world that worships self-fulfillment, beauty, youth, and living for today, of what authentic value is a moral code?

In the year this film was released, folk rocker Stephen Stills had a Top 20 hit with a song whose lyrics espoused the then-popular "free-love" philosophy: "If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with." (Which in itself is a retooling of an E.Y. Harburg lyric from a song from the 1947 Broadway musical, Finian's Rainbow: "If I'm not near the girl I love, I love the girl I'm near.”) The timbre of the times literally reflected the philosophy of Dorian Gray's Hedononist-in-Chief, Henry Wotton: life is to be enjoyed freely and openly, and youth is a briefly bestowed gift best utilized to its fullest while one possesses it.

Prince Charming and Juliet
Prior to embarking on a long-term love affair with himself, Dorian falls into
idealized love with virginal (albeit not for long) aspiring actress Sybil Vane

The '60s atmosphere of moral relativism would seem to suggest that this particular incarnation of Dorian Gray was perhaps conceived as a means of addressing Oscar Wilde's themes in a manner relevant to the changing times. An opportunity to reflect upon what distinctions exist, if any, between being liberated and being a libertine. Alas, from the film's first Giallo-influenced frames (Giallo being a stylized genre of Italian thriller), it's clear that this Dorian Gray is less interested in exploring the complex themes of aestheticism vs. morality so much as exploring how far the newly relaxed standards of cinema censorship can be pressed into the service of chronicling Dorian's heretofore only-hinted-at depravities and sins of the flesh.

Desire Under the Elms

PERFORMANCES
Italian cinema's long history of dubbing and post-synching dialog frequently makes it tough to access actors' performances. Dorian Gray's multi-national cast speaks its dialogue in English, but the entire film is dubbed by other actors (save for Herbert Lom, who provides his own voice). This might spare audiences the sometimes ear-gnarling clash of dueling accents you get with many international productions, but it also tends to rob performances of a great deal of their vitality. This is especially true of the dynamic and charismatic Helmut Berger, who possesses a sexy, melodic voice and whose charming Teutonic lisp (he's Austrian, actually) I greatly miss.

Action films and mostly-silent spaghetti westerns fare better under this practice, but a dialogue-heavy film like this — with its attempts at Wilde-ishly witty banter — makes for a particularly clumsy aural experience. The effect of all these somewhat flat, disembodied voices is that already dodgy performances are rendered thoroughly ineffectual (I'm sorry, but lovely Marie Liljedahl seems like a pretty awful actress in any language), and potentially good performances (Berger, Isa Miranda, Renato Romano) are de-fanged and neutered. In its place is a form of acting I tend to associate with those Hammer horror films from the '60s: underlined and over-indicated to the point of pantomime.

"Do you want to sell it, Mr. Gray?"
In a minute, randy millionairess Patricia Ruxton (Isa Miranda) 
will make it obscenely clear she isn't talking about real estate

Happily, Dorian Gray, having been fashioned as an erotic exploitation film from the get-go, isn't really a film fueled by its performances. Like a trash novel by Sidney Sheldon or Jacqueline Susann (fans of Valley of the Dolls would love this), Dorian Gray is a movie devoted to surface gloss. And on that score - from its photogenic cast, sumptuous color photography, lavish locations, outrageous mod costuming, and climate of glamorized sleaze - Dorian Gray more than delivers.

Tearoom for Two
Dorian Gray, Sexual Outlaw

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

A hurdle for any screen adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray is the casting of a Dorian whose looks correspond to enough people's wildly subjective notions of male beauty so as not to render the narrative absurd, or at the very least, puzzling. For my money, director Dallamano hits pay dirt with the casting of Helmut Berger. A man so staggeringly beautiful that he makes personal fave Joe Dallesandro (certainly one of the most gorgeous men to have ever walked the planet) look like Ernest Borgnine.

Something not possible in earlier adaptations, contemporary Dorian Gray becomes a porn star!

Protégé and life partner of director Lucino Visconti, Berger appeared prominently for the director in The Damned, Ludwig, and Conversation Piece. Dubbed by the press at the time as the most beautiful man in the world, Helmut, smooth, slim, and marvelously devoid of tattoos, was like the Richard Gere/Ewan McGregor of his day: he couldn't keep his clothes on.
In the '70s, female stars were jumping out of their clothing in record numbers, but one had to rely almost exclusively on Andy Warhol-produced Paul Morrissey films to catch male nudity of any consequence. Lucky for us connoisseurs of male pulchritude, Helmut Berger obligingly doffed his trousers in film after film. A fact that certainly leaves me wondering to what degree my affinity for this film is tied to the filmmakers taking every opportunity to feature our leading man in various states of undress. I'll have to think about that.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
Someone once said, "Everyone has trash, but what distinguishes us is the quality of our trash," (it sounds like something John Waters would say). I apply this philosophy to my taste in movies. I'm well aware that a great many of the films I get the biggest kick out of are films many would perceive as pure cinema trash, but there's not a soul in the world who could convince me that my particular brand of trash isn't some of the most superior trash you're likely to come across. It's often the very best that the worst has to offer.

The striking actress Beryl Cunningham portrays Adrienne, Dorian's amoral partner-in-blackmail

In Dorian Gray, you have the typical youth-directed sexploitation stuff American International released with assembly-line regularity in the '60s and '70s (Three in the Attic, Angel, Angel, Down We Go), only this time cloaked in the veil of literary significance. In most aspects superficial (those centering on the libidinous exploits of Dorian), the film does right by its conceit in updating the tale to modern times. But it fails to go much below the surface in examining even a fraction of the ideas and concepts its premise suggests.
Curiously, it's the passing of time which has granted Dorian Gray the subtextual gravity it lacked in 1970. Albeit perhaps, uncomfortably.

Actor Helmut Berger has gone on record about his disdain for Los Angeles and Hollywood, and has thus, outside of a small part in The Godfather: Part III and a year's penance on TV's Dynasty in 1983, mostly worked in Europe. High living (literally...drug and alcohol abuse) eventually got the better of him, and like Marlon Brando, that other physical specimen who ceased to care for maintaining a youthful appearance for the comfort of his fans, Helmut did the unspeakable...he allowed himself to age naturally.

Renato Romano portrays Dorian's boyhood friend, Alan Campbell, a chemist

Certainly his current condition is to some degree a result of youthful excesses, but at almost 70 years of age, part is merely due to a thing that has become increasingly rare among public figures: actual aging. A phenomenon practically unheard of in Hollywood, our culture reveres beauty so completely that an individual who allows his looks to "go" is considered more a figure of pity than one who pathetically clings to eternal youth.
Personally, I find Helmut Berger's current relaxed-into-himself countenance very refreshing, and it speaks of a self-image perhaps a good deal healthier than the plastic-surgery nightmares that proliferate in Hollywood today. I've read many online comments about how sad it is that Berger has failed to maintain his looks as he ages, but little speculation along the lines of how he might be happier and more at peace with himself now than in his cocaine-thin days.

Helmut Berger in his 60s  /  Berger at 25 

The questions about inner vs. outer beauty that Oscar Wilde dramatized so artfully years ago (and if you've never read The Portrait of Dorian Gray, I heartily recommend it) are still with us... maybe now more than ever. In our looks-obsessed culture in which beauty is so often seen as a virtue, is youth really a thing worth trying to hold onto forever, prizing it above all? And what value does beauty have to the possessor (we on the outside benefit from gazing upon it) if there's not also peace of mind? It's a pity that Dorian Gray, an exploitation film distracted by its own sensationalism, failed to delve deeper into the many questions raised by its enduringly appealing premise.

But take a look at the film now, through the prism of 43 years having passed. Like a real-life Dorian Gray, Helmut Berger in this movie provides a record of himself in a state of near-perfect youth. A moving portrait frozen, unchanging, and captured on film for all time. Knowing now what we couldn't have known in 1970 (what ultimately becomes of Helmut's celebrated beauty, his battles with drugs and alcoholism, and the toll they take on his face, body, and mind) raises the very issues Oscar Wilde's novel proposed all those years ago, and makes us question our own attitudes about beauty, aging, and the value we place upon such things.

"The world belongs to the young and beautiful," Wotton tells Dorian. Perhaps that's true. But it's ownership with a very short lease. Beauty is indeed something, but it's sobering to ponder, when considering Helmut Berger's troubled life and how little peace his good looks brought him, how obviously beauty isn't everything.

Copyright © Ken Anderson     2009 - 2013