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The groundwork is from Mamoulian's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Val Lewton's concurrent work pervades the form. To be aware of youth is to be conscious of its evanescence, so learns Dorian Gray (Hurd Hatfield) beholding the painting of his beautiful callow self, his visage dissolves to a butterfly flapping on a saucer of chloroform. "It was monstrous to even think it," the wish is granted and "moral leprosy" spreads over the canvas while the aristocrat remains unblemished across the years. His first victim is the plaintive tavern singer (Angela Lansbury), who follows a rendition of "Little Yellow Bird" with an evaluation of Chopin's "Prelude": "It's full of emotion... But it's not happy." As Lord Wotton, George Sanders pops in and out like a steam-powered epigram dispenser. "I can believe anything, provided that it is quite incredible." Oscar Wilde's Faust duly bowdlerized for MGM consumption, its tastefulness enlivened by the occasional Gothic frisson. (Harry Stradling photographs in deep-focus, the better to show off Albert Lewin's meticulous bric-à-brac.) Between petulant juvenile and death's head, "something fatal" about high cheekbones under a top hat. Les Fleurs du Mal for carriage reading, Don Giovanni for getting over the demise of purity, a feline statuette forever peeping through the clutter. "I didn't come here to discuss the verses of Omar Khayyam." Victorian London in the backlot, the gilded cages of drawing rooms and "the half-world" of dank pubs. Sin is elided, and then it flashes in Technicolor. "You've chatted enough about corruption. Now, you'll look at it." La Règle du jeu is a consideration in the rabbit hunt, Vertigo is divined via bon mot ("Everyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco"). With Donna Reed, Peter Lawford, Lowell Gilmore, Richard Fraser, Douglas Walton, Morton Lowry, Miles Mander, Lydia Bilbrook, Mary Forbes, Robert Greig, Billy Bevan, Moyna Macgill, and Anita Sharp-Bolster. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |