Precise, initiatory, subversive,
The Picture of Dorian Gray
is a timeless novel, as any masterpiece should be.
A work of truth.
This is what this gripping documentary highlights.
Dorian Gray.
A portrait of Oscar Wilde
tells the Faustian story imagined by the Irish novelist (1854-1900) in his famous book published in 1890. Directors Jérôme Lambert and Philippe Picard rely on numerous extracts from the film adaptation of Albert Lewin, in 1945. Everything is informed by comments from writers and academics.
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“I remember when I read this book I was 17 years old. I was never very beautiful, but I can assure you that at 17 it was worse... I was reading this novel and I wanted to be Dorian Gray. I saw the ideal of youth that I would have wanted to experience and of which I felt so cruelly deprived,”
confides Amélie Nothomb about this fantastic tale which evokes beauty, youth and desire.
“Feeling of lightness”
“Self-love is an idyll that never ends. »
This quote from Oscar Wilde is at the heart of the novel.
In a London studio, the attractive Dorian observes his portrait which Basil Hallward, a renowned painter, has just finished.
The scene takes place in the presence of the dandy Lord Henry.
We then see on screen the latter say, in an extract from Lewin's film: “
Look at you, Mr. Gray!
» A passage from the book is then read in voice-over: “
Dorian replied nothing, but walked nonchalantly past his portrait.
Then turned to him.
When he saw it, he cringed and his cheeks flushed momentarily with pleasure.
A joyful look lit up his eyes as if he recognized himself for the first time.
The feeling of his own beauty invades him like a revelation.
»
So much so that the young man ends up feeling a powerful jealousy towards his own representation.
“If this portrait could change and I could remain as I am, I would give absolutely everything, even my soul,”
Dorian wishes.
“It’s Faust infinitely deeper,” admires Amélie Nothomb.
Because Faust goes there with his big clogs.
The devil shows up and offers him the deal.
(…).
Things don't happen like that, they happen like in Wilde's work
.
As for the dizzying parallel between fiction and the real life of the Irish dandy, it is perfectly highlighted in this documentary
Dorian Gray, a portrait of Oscar Wilde
, broadcast on Le Figaro TV Île-de-France.
The portrait of Dorian Gray
“provides momentum, dynamics, a feeling of lightness (…).
It’s a novel against fear, which invites us to be courageous, to stop being afraid of living,”
says Anatole Tomczak, translator of the initial version of this work.