Ten Days of Terror!: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Film: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

One of the problems of a lot of Code-era horror films is that they aren’t really that scary. There are a few that genuinely try to get there, but especially the Gothic stuff is more fun than it is frightening. Some really do go for at least disturbing implications. That’s absolutely the case with The Picture of Dorian Gray, a film based on the classic Oscar Wilde novel. There’s nothing here that would cause most modern horror fans to consider this much of a horror movie because there’s nothing here that is really overtly horrific. All of the horror is much more internal and much more subtle, which makes it so much better.

It’s likely that you already know the basic story. Just in case you don’t the elevator pitch is pretty simple. A young man named Dorian Gray (Hurd Hatfield) has a portrait painted of himself. Due to the influence of the morally bankrupt Lord Henry Watton (George Sanders), Gray makes a wish that he remain young while the portrait ages. This wish more or less comes true. Dorian Gray remains a young man while the portrait ages. However, the portrait doesn’t merely get older; it also essentially reflects the quality of Gray’s soul. As his physical being no longer reflects any consequence of his actions, Dorian Gray becomes more and more morally bankrupt and his portrait becomes more and more terrible as the years progress.

She Blinded Me with Science

Film: Madame Curie
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

Don’t let the fact that I have degrees in English literature and linguistics color your opinion on what I’m about to say: I am a science geek. The vast majority of my reading for pleasure is connected to science in one way or another. I admit that I’m not much more than a dilettante when it comes to actual science, but I love it. Stories about science, about its importance and its benefits, are always interesting to me. So when Turner Classic ran Madame Curie, a film that I’ve had some difficulty tracking down, I was pretty interested.

The main point of Madame Curie as a film is to humanize our two main characters, Pierre (Walter Pidgeon) and Marie Curie (Greer Garson). We start with Marie’s days in college at the Sorbonne. She is young, talented, and dirt poor, and attracts the attention of one of her professors when she faints in class. The professor (Albert Bassermann) takes interest in Marie and offers her a position doing research on a particular question. Short on laboratory space, the professor convinces Pierre Curie to accept her into his lab, where she becomes a person of intense fascination to Curie’s lab assistant, David (Robert Walker).

Obscure Spongebob Reference Not Intended

Film: Pandora and the Flying Dutchman
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on big ol’ television.

Our NetFlix subscription has been a boon in finding a lot of movies, but NetFlix doesn’t have everything. There are probably 100 or more films not in the NetFlix library that might show up eventually and might not. One of these is Albert Lewin’s Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, which has been sitting in my NetFlix queue at the bottom in the “not available” category for months. What a treat to find it at a public library!

Like many films of the day, this one starts at the end. A collection of Spanish fishermen dredge up something horrible—a pair of bodies intertwined. We don’t see them; we see only their hands clasped together in death on the beach. The story is then picked up by a professor of archaeology named Geoffrey Fielding (Harold Warrender), who relates the tale of Pandora (Ava Gardner).

Pandora is a beautiful but selfish and self-centered woman. Every man who knows her, even in some respects Fielding, is infatuated with her, and she uses this knowledge to force men to act in the way she wants. She’s a tease, and in our opening scene with her, she teases a man named Reggie (Marius Goring) into suicide. Since he can’t have her, he poisons himself. She also teases Stephen (Nigel Patrick), the object of Janet’s affection. Stephen is a driver, and has spent two years building a car to break the land speed record. Pandora promises to marry him if he pushes his car into the sea. He does. She tells him since it is the ninth day of the third month, she will marry him on the third day of the ninth month.

Unbeknownst to Pandora is the presence of Hendrick van der Zee (James Mason), who has shown up in the small Spanish port. Pandora swims out to his ship and meets him, surprised that he is alone. He is in the middle of painting a portrait, quite coincidentally of the Greek myth Pandora, and the face on the portrait is Pandora’s. She becomes quite interested in him as a result, and he joins her group of friends and suitors on the Spanish coast.

What we (and Fielding) learn is that van der Zee is truly the Flying Dutchman of legend. He killed his wife, convinced that she had been unfaithful, and declares a curse on himself at his trial. He escapes his jail cell and returns to his ship only to discover that the curse has come true. He cannot die. He is forced to roam the Earth alone and eternally. Every seven years, he can come ashore for six months to find a woman and convince her to love him so much that she will give up her life for him.

Into this mix, we add a matador named Juan Montalvo (Mario Cabre), who is also infatuated with Pandora. He schemes against the other men (especially van der Zee), Stephen rescues his car from the ocean and attempts to set the land speed record a few days before the wedding, and everything comes to a head, leading back to the beginning. Honestly, it’s impossible to spoil the ending of this movie. If you’ve seen the first five minutes, you know how it’s going to end.

The question is the movie’s place on the list. Does it belong? I’m not really sure. It’s a nice story and an interesting one because of the supernatural elements in the story. I’ll be blunt here: I like James Mason a lot. I think he was almost always great and it’s impossible not to watch him when he’s on the screen. Ava Gardner, though, does nothing for me. I’m not sure why.

While the film is about the romance, it’s also about the growth of the Pandora character. She’s nasty for quite a bit of the film. It’s evident that van der Zee is enamored with her because she is the very image of his murdered wife. She’s mean, though, through a good part of the movie. This is entirely intentional, of course, because if there is no real growth in the character, there’s no real purpose behind the film. As the film goes on, she learns that her own desire to hurt others comes from her own unhappiness, and by the end of the film, rather than goading Montalvo, she seeks only to calm him and send him on his way.

The supernatural elements seem to be an attempt to add weight to the film, but I don’t know if there’s enough there. It’s a sweet movie, and a tearjerker of sorts, but all in all, it doesn’t belong with the greatest of the great.

Why to watch Pandora and the Flying Dutchman: Because James Mason kicks ass.
Why not to watch: Too fluffy to be anything more than a curiousity.