Axel Strøm | Dorian Grays Portræt (The Picture of Dorian Gray) / 1910 || Phillips Smalley | The Picture of Dorian Gray / 1913 || Vsevolod Meyerhold and Mikhail Doronin | Portret Doryana Greya (The Picture of Dorian Gray) / 1915 || Richard Oswald | Das bildnis des Dorian Gray (The Picture of Dorian Gray) / 1917 || Alfréd Deésy | Az Élet királya (King of Life) / 1918

hidden pictures

by Douglas Messerli

 

Over the years, one of the most popular of LGBTQ fictions was perhaps the hardest one to actually pin down as representing the gay experience. There is no question that Oscar Wilde’s renowned fiction about a handsome, apparently bisexual man, whose beauty attracts both sexes represents the kind of closeted condition of the homosexual in disapproving societies. But to actually pin Dorian Gray to gay sexual activity is difficult unless you more fully examine his relationships with the painter Basil Hallward, the influences upon his character of Lord Henry Wotton, and, in particular, his former relationship with Alan Campbell over whom Dorian evidently holds some sort of power of blackmail, presumably their own sexual relationship including a letter. But all of these subtleties were surely difficult to express in the short silent versions which were highly popular in the second decade of the 20th century.

       The subject was filmed in Denmark, the US, Russia, Germany, and Hungary, but all of these versions are lost and we have only sparse listings and commentary on them. In a sense they have all become “hidden” versions the The Picture just as surely as Dorian’s own locked-away portrait.

 

the picture of dorian gray

 

Axel Strøm (writer, based on the fiction by Oscar Wilde, and director) Dorian Grays Portræt (The Picture of Dorian Gray) / 1910 || lost film

 

What appears to be the very first cinematic adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray was directed by the Danish filmmaker Axel Strøm and released on October 6, 1910. The silent film was produced by Regia Kunstfilms with cinematography by Mads Anton Madsen.

 

      Valdemar Psilander played Dorian Gray, with Clara Pontoppidan playing a character named Clara Wieth, presumably the role of Sybil Vane in the original book. Other actors included Adam Poulsen and Henrik Malberg.

       Since the film is lost we have no idea what scenes the film portrayed from Wilde’s original text or whether these contained any overt homosexual references. However, In his Queer Cinema: The Film Reader Henry Benshoff notes that in the 1910s films begin to explore for the first time “the monstrous as expressed in the gothic literature of the nineteenth century.” Films such as Edison’s Frankenstein (1910) and D. W. Griffith’s adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” The Avenging Conscience (1914), along with seven versions of The Picture of Dorian Gray began to explore the male monsters of the previous century, with the 1917 version of Wilde’s story, in particular, characterizing Dorian Gray as the devil. Clearly, these several depictions of Wilde’s Gray began to establish the homosexual as a monster, a danger to the society at large.

 

Los Angeles, April 10, 2021

 

 

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the picture of dorian gray

 

Lois Weber (screenplay), Phillips Smalley (director) The Picture of Dorian Gray / 1913 || lost film

 

Very little is known about the lost 1913 version of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, and some film historians now doubt whether this version of the film ever existed, although credits and the specific release date of March 17, 1913 are repeated on the internet Wikipedia and IMDb sites. This version was first mentioned in the 1966 copy of Films In Review.

     If these sources are correct, the cast of the 16-minute short starred Wallace Reid as Dorian, with Lois Weber presumably playing Sybil Vane, and the director Phillips Smalley performing the role of Lord Henry Wotton. New York Motion Picture Company is listed as the producer.

     What scenes from Wilde’s novel were adapted for this short is not known, along with any information of whether there are any implications in the work of homosexuality other than Wilde’s original coded text.

 

Los Angeles, April 10, 2021

 

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the picture of dorian gray (1915)

 

Vsevolod Meyerhold and Mikhail Doronin (text, based on Oscar Wilde’s fiction, and directors) Portret Doryana Greya (The Picture of Dorian Gray) / 1915 || lost film

 

Perhaps the most prestigious of the now lost Dorian Gray films was the 1915 silent, 22-minute film directed by Vsevolod Meyerhold and Mikhail Doronin in 1915. That film, with Aleksandr Levitsky serving as cinematographer featured a woman, Varnara Yanova as Dorian Gray, emphasizing the beautiful young man’s androgyny, and featured Meyerhold himself as Lord Henry  Wotton. Other members of the cast included Paola Belova, Gustav Enriton, Yelizaveta Uvarova, Alexandre Volkoff and Doronin playing other unnamed characters. The art direction was by Vladimir Yegorov.

       A long essay on the script has been published which basically describes the film as introducing biographical information about Dorian Gray as well as linking the character with Wilde himself, based on his notion that a work of art always most resembles the artist himself.

       Meyerhold’s company was noted for its international theater productions of plays by Ernst Toller, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Emile Verhaeren and numerous others along with two other films by fin-de-siècle authors. But at this point in his career Meyerhold had not yet found his audience, most the films being ignored also in the West, and, accordingly, “lost.”

      As one unnamed commentator put it:

 

“...we can only imagine what this film was like, based on the few stills in circulation. Meyerhold frequently made use of modern art trends, in particular Constructivism, German Expressionism and Cubism (employing the likes of Aleksandr Rodchenko and Aleksandra Exter to design sets), and it is likely that he did so with this picture. Indeed, one critic has claimed that if Dorian Gray had been seen in the West before Wiene’s Das Kabinett des Dr. Caligari, then it might have won similar acclaim and exerted a much higher level of influence.

     As it stands, the film was not noted until it was too late, and now it, like Meyerhold’s film of Stanislaw Przybyszewski’s novel The Strong Man, no longer exists. However, Meyerhold’s theoretical works on theatre have survived, despite the director’s execution under order of Stalin in 1939-40 (due to his refusal to toe the Party line during the 1928-32 Cultural Revolution), and they are probably the most useful tools for anyone wishing to inform themselves about the works of this great director.”

      Above is a poster for the film and a frame from the film itself.

 

Los Angeles, April 10, 2021

 

 

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the sympathetic decadent

 

Richard Oswald (screenwriter, based on the fiction by Oscar Wilde, and director) Das bildnis des Dorian Gray (The Picture of Dorian Gray) / 1917 || lost film

 

Although it still appears on some lists of productions as an extant film, the German cinematic version of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Das Bildnis des Dorian Gray, directed by Richard Oswald and released in July 1917 has for long been considered a lost film.

       This version, unlike most of the previous adaptions, was a full five-act, 80-minute feature starring the German matinee idol, Bernd Aldor, this the first of some 20 film roles in which he starred between 1917-1931.

     He often portrayed a detective, but also worked regularly with Oswald acting roles of other kinds of characters in a 1917 film about venereal disease Es Werde Licht!, Des goldes Fluch (God’s Curse, 1917), Der lbebende Leichnam (The Living Corpse, 1918), and Die seltsame Geschichte des Bron Torelli (The Strange Tale of Baron Torelli, 1918).

     From the pictures we have of this production, Aldor evidently played Dorian Gray as a sailor, although another shot of him before the portrait represents him as wearing a Japanese-like robe. Ernst Pittschau appeared as Sir Henry Wotton, Ernst Ludwig as Basil Hallward, Lea Lara as Sibyl Vane, and Andreas Van Horn as Dorian’s ex-college chum Alan Campbell.

     The cinematographer was Max Fassbender and the sets were designed by Manfred Noa.

     Reviewers of the day praised its relative faithfulness to the original text, and for the empathy the director created for the lead figure Aldor.

     The poster for the film quite nicely catches the fin de siècle spirit of the original.

 

Los Angeles, June 8, 2021

 

       

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lugosi as a wit?

 

József Pakots (screenplay, based on the fiction by Oscar Wilde), Alfréd Deésy (director) Az Élet királya (King of Life) / 1918 || lost film

 

In hindsight it appears that one of the requirements that anyone undertaking to film a version of Oscar Wilde’s fiction The Picture of Dorian Gray is that, even if that work were to become enormously popular, it would ultimately be lost to future generations.

     Just as with the early Danish, US, Russian, and German productions of Dorian Gray the Hungarian 1918 film, Az Élet királya (King of Life), directed by Alfréd Deésy, is a lost film.

      The casting of actor Béla Lugosi as Lord Henry Wotton (in this version named Arisztid Olt) is of particular interest. It’s interesting to imagine the rather lugubriously speaking Dracula playing the fast-quipping wit Wotton. Norbert Dán was Dorian Gray, opposite Ila Lóth as Sibyl Vane. The painter Basil Hallward was performed by Gusztáv Turán.

      Wilde’s novel was adapted by József Pakots, with cinematography by Károly Vass.

     Deésy was a major figure of Hungarian silent filmmaking, shooting some 17 silent films including one on Casanova and another on Sacco and Vanzetti, but very few of his silent works have survived. After World II, Deésy also made feature sound films and continued to work until his death in 1961 at the age of 83.

 

    Like the others playing Gray, Norbert Dán was an extremely handsome matinee idol, who would have likely drawn a great many fans to the movie.

 

Los Angeles, June 10, 2021