I detest filmed plays--videotaped TV ones such as this even more so. As far back as the late 1900s to early 1910s, when primarily French and Italian studios began to introduce the feature-length film by recording well-regarded stage performances, I detest them. They place us in the position of a second-generation spectator, removing the benefits of live theatre. The use of the camera is typically uninspired. Sure, by 1976, they'd learned to change up the camera positions once in a while, and this one has those wretched TV zooms, but it remains tediously stagy, which isn't helped here by the fact that all of the scenes take place in a few interiors.
It's rather odd to see the book by Oscar Wilde, who was mostly a playwright--this being his only novel, crammed into a claustrophobic, limiting theatrical performance. This one is so bad that it misses its greatest opportunity for a play-within-a-play structure, via the Shakespearean performances by the character Sibyl Vane. Instead, there are merely scenes where her performances are talked about; they're never shown to us.
Moreover, this is a cowardly adaptation. Although it has few qualms with depicting the violence of Wilde's Victorian-age story, this TV movie shies away from its suggestions of sex and drugs. This is most confusing in the scene where Sibyl's brother attacks Dorian in some unknown room. In the book, he was attacked outside an opium den, but since this TV version makes no reference to such a taboo subject, there's no indication of where this scene is taking place. They don't even complete this storyline, so there was no good reason to even include it here, either. You know it's bad when a 1976 production is more censored than a product from the 19th century. This is also the case across the pond in the 1983 American TV movie "The Sins of Dorian Gray." A 1970 Italian Dorian Gray film, however, is much more explicit.
To say something somewhat nice, though, this version probably contains more of Wilde's words than any other screen adaptation I've seen since seeking them out after reading the novel. But, I don't care about that; I'm not a lazy schoolchild who needs to pretend they read the book for class tomorrow. Also, John Gielgud, although he's too old for the part as Wilde wrote it, he quotes the epigrams and witticisms of Lord Henry with vigor.
There aren't as many movie adaptations of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" as there are for other 19th-century Gothic horror classics, such as "Frankenstein," "Dracula" and "Jekyll and Hyde," so I'd only recommend the 1945 MGM version, which is a beautiful cinematic showing rather than a shoddy videotaped play.
It's rather odd to see the book by Oscar Wilde, who was mostly a playwright--this being his only novel, crammed into a claustrophobic, limiting theatrical performance. This one is so bad that it misses its greatest opportunity for a play-within-a-play structure, via the Shakespearean performances by the character Sibyl Vane. Instead, there are merely scenes where her performances are talked about; they're never shown to us.
Moreover, this is a cowardly adaptation. Although it has few qualms with depicting the violence of Wilde's Victorian-age story, this TV movie shies away from its suggestions of sex and drugs. This is most confusing in the scene where Sibyl's brother attacks Dorian in some unknown room. In the book, he was attacked outside an opium den, but since this TV version makes no reference to such a taboo subject, there's no indication of where this scene is taking place. They don't even complete this storyline, so there was no good reason to even include it here, either. You know it's bad when a 1976 production is more censored than a product from the 19th century. This is also the case across the pond in the 1983 American TV movie "The Sins of Dorian Gray." A 1970 Italian Dorian Gray film, however, is much more explicit.
To say something somewhat nice, though, this version probably contains more of Wilde's words than any other screen adaptation I've seen since seeking them out after reading the novel. But, I don't care about that; I'm not a lazy schoolchild who needs to pretend they read the book for class tomorrow. Also, John Gielgud, although he's too old for the part as Wilde wrote it, he quotes the epigrams and witticisms of Lord Henry with vigor.
There aren't as many movie adaptations of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" as there are for other 19th-century Gothic horror classics, such as "Frankenstein," "Dracula" and "Jekyll and Hyde," so I'd only recommend the 1945 MGM version, which is a beautiful cinematic showing rather than a shoddy videotaped play.