Personally, I don't much understand the high level of praise being given this movie. I don't find any of the actors to be convincing in their roles. The weak script and direction doesn't help, nor do the painful repetitions of the "Gilded Cage" song. What the movie does successfully, however, is to brilliantly stage the final unveiling of the portrait, and this alone makes the movie worth watching.
To set us up for this final scene, the movie creates a progression which directs our expectations for the next step in that progression, but then exceeds those expectations in a shocking manner. I don't know if there is a name to describe this, but the textbook example is when Tippi Hedren is waiting outside of the schoolhouse while "The Birds" amass in the playground behind here. In Dorian Gray, the progression is an extremely minimal one. First we see the angelic looking portrait of the angelic looking Gray. After his first act of cruelty, we see the portrait again. Dorian Gray the person still looks perfect, but the portrait now has the very slightest of sneers. It is not until many years later that we will see the portrait again.
When we arrive at that scene, we expect that the portrait is going to have to be very ugly. Nothing can prepare us, however, for just how ugly it has become. When the portrait is finally sprung upon us in full living color (the rest of the film being black and white), it has become horrible beyond anything we could have imagined.
What really works about this scene, however, is not that initial shock, but the slow realization that the unprecedented grotesqueness of the portrait is in fact a mirror of the grotesqueness of the soul of Dorian Gray. Today's films would make somebody look evil by graphically showing us in detail all of his evil acts, but doing so only turns the person into a psychotic comic-book caricature. In Dorian Gray, we are given a depiction of the extremes of evil which might actually exist in anyone who might otherwise appear as a fine, upstanding member of our community. If the rest of the movie had matched the quality of this final scene, then Dorian Gray could well have been the most realistically evil character in film history.
To set us up for this final scene, the movie creates a progression which directs our expectations for the next step in that progression, but then exceeds those expectations in a shocking manner. I don't know if there is a name to describe this, but the textbook example is when Tippi Hedren is waiting outside of the schoolhouse while "The Birds" amass in the playground behind here. In Dorian Gray, the progression is an extremely minimal one. First we see the angelic looking portrait of the angelic looking Gray. After his first act of cruelty, we see the portrait again. Dorian Gray the person still looks perfect, but the portrait now has the very slightest of sneers. It is not until many years later that we will see the portrait again.
When we arrive at that scene, we expect that the portrait is going to have to be very ugly. Nothing can prepare us, however, for just how ugly it has become. When the portrait is finally sprung upon us in full living color (the rest of the film being black and white), it has become horrible beyond anything we could have imagined.
What really works about this scene, however, is not that initial shock, but the slow realization that the unprecedented grotesqueness of the portrait is in fact a mirror of the grotesqueness of the soul of Dorian Gray. Today's films would make somebody look evil by graphically showing us in detail all of his evil acts, but doing so only turns the person into a psychotic comic-book caricature. In Dorian Gray, we are given a depiction of the extremes of evil which might actually exist in anyone who might otherwise appear as a fine, upstanding member of our community. If the rest of the movie had matched the quality of this final scene, then Dorian Gray could well have been the most realistically evil character in film history.