Reeling Backward: "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1945)

Most people know the parable of Dorian Gray without actually being aware of the story. I admit I wasn't.

Oscar Wilde's only novel has a great premise: a promising young man has his portrait painted, and wishes for eternal youth by having the passing of time reflected upon his artistic reflection rather than his actual visage. (A mysterious statue of a cat included in the painting is supposed to be the source of the charm.) As the years go by and people marvel at his unchanged appearance, Dorian hides the painting so no one will discover his secret.

But rather than being about just looking young, the real essence of the tale hinges upon Dorian's very soul. He engages in all sorts of terrible behavior, including drugs and debauchery, eventually leading up to murder. The portrait winds up looking like something hanging on the walls of Disney's Haunted Mansion -- a wild, leprous old man with lunatic eyes and blood on his hands.

Adapted by journeyman writer/director Albert Lewin, "The Picture of Dorian Gray" is a sort of Gothic horror melded with a cautionary note. It's a gorgeous-looking picture with terrific costumes and sets, earning an Oscar nomination for art direction and a win for Harry Stradling's cinematography, which is black-and-white except for the shots of the portraits, which are rendered in vivid Technicolor.

Hurd Hatfield portrays Dorian in his first starring role, which would end up defining his career. He deliberately plays the role with a nearly placid face, his powerful emotions being etched upon the painting rather than his face. Angela Lansbury also makes a bow in just her third screen credit, playing Dorian's doomed lady love, songstress Sybil Vane.

George Sanders got top billing as Lord Henry Wotton, a detestable nobleman who lives only for pleasure and to toy with others. (Think John Malkovich's character in "Dangerous Liaisons.") It is he who first plants the idea of an unchanging portrait in Dorian's mind, as well as serving as the film's narrator.

Dorian is a minor nobleman of about age 20. Blessed with wealth, independence and extraordinary good looks, he would seem to be set up for a happy life. When Wotton stumbles upon him, Dorian is being painted by their mutual friend, the good-hearted Basil Hallward (Lowell Gilmore). His young niece, Gladys, playfully adds her own "G" to Basil's signature upon the painting.

Years later she will grow into a beautiful young woman (played by Donna Reed) who is entirely ensorceled by Dorian and wants to marry him. He puts her off repeatedly, although eventually comes to see wedding her as his only chance to redeem himself.

His first love is Sybil, a singer in a low-rent carny show on London's seedier side. Given a front-row seat by the opportunistic emcee, Dorian becomes entranced by her rendition of "Little Yellow Bird," a lovely ditty about a free sparrow refusing a chance to enjoy love with a beautiful songbird if it means joining him in his golden cage. The song was written specifically for the film.

Lansbury is a wan, authentic presence, earning her own Academy Award nomination.

Dorian returns night after night, earning the enmity of Sybil's brother (Richard Fraser). But he proves his honorable intentions by proposing marriage, which shocks Wotton, Hallward and his other high-society connections. Wotton offers a test: insist that she stay the night with him and, if Sybil refuses, she is worthy of his name. At first she makes to go, and Dorian breaks a rare smile; but she returns, (presumably) they sleep together and he then dumps her.

She takes her own life, and this is when Dorian first notices a change in the portrait -- a bit of a cruel curve to the mouth. He pledges himself entirely to Wotton's ethos of self-indulgence, and the years fly by.

It being a 1945 film based on a book that was quite controversial in the 1890s, the movie is predictably circumspect about the nature of Dorian's debauchery. It shows him frequenting a lonely tavern on the wrong side of town, taking a sip of cherry while he wants for deformed servant to lead him to an unseen room upstairs. A mix of opium and sodomy, we presume.

The last part of the film is a bit messy plot-wise, introducing characters rather late in the game we're supposed to care about. One is Allen Campbell (Douglas Walton), an old school chum of Dorian's who has become a chemist. Dorian blackmails him to do his bidding with some embarrassing piece of information, but since we've just met the guy and the film offers no details on Campbell's past transgressions, it's heard to feel the weight of his guilt, or his later (off-screen) suicide.

There's also David (Peter Lawford, in a breakout role), playing Gladys' jealous other suitor, who eventually stumbles upon Dorian's secret.

Still, "The Picture of Dorian Gray" -- I always want to call it "Portrait" -- is a reasonably decent adaptation of a classic story. Even if it's one most people know only superficially.

Reeling Backward: "The Last Time I Saw Paris" (1954)

I admit I had a hard time even getting through "The Last Time I Saw Paris."

It represents exactly the sort of Golden Age filmmaking that so turned me off as a youth: melodramatic, slowly paced, maudlin to the point of groan-inducing. It's a romantic film that starts off as a joyful scamp, turns into a drama and soon a tragedy. It's what was known in the old days as a "weepie" -- I laughed, I cried, I couldn't wait for it to end.

I chose to feature it mostly because of the presence of Van Johnson, a largely forgotten performer whose career I've been wanting to explore further. During the filming of "A Guy Named Joe" he nearly had his scalp torn off in a horrible car accident, resulting in deep scars on his forehead that Hollywood makeup and lighting couldn't fully hide.

He was held out of the military as a result of his injuries, while many big stars of the era served (often in morale-boosting roles far from the danger). So for a brief moment in time, Johnson was arguably the biggest American film star. Though, like Rosie the Riveter, he soon relinquished his title when the boys came home.

Tall, freckled and strawberry blond, Johnson was a song-and-dance man whose charismatic, amiable onscreen persona left many to underestimate his talents as an actor. MGM, facing financial trouble, dropped his contract after this movie came out, but he segued into a busy career on television, and ended up doing summer stock and dinner theater into the 1970s and '80s.

The pairing with Elizabeth Taylor is an electric one. Just 21 years old, she plays Helen, a vampy seductress who pursues Charles, a Stars and Stripes correspondent, in the aftermath of the war. Her family is not wealthy but lives like they are, scraping up champagne and evening wear for a never-ending party with her father, James (an agreeable Walter Pidgeon), as the emcee and raconteur.

As Charles segues into a job as a correspondent for the Europa News Service while dreaming of writing novels, James advises him to stock his stories with the good stuff: "Riches, ruffians and rape."

Alas, his novelist career never takes off and Charles, inundated with rejections from publishers, soon turns his frustration on Helen, who withdraws back into her role as the most famous American in Paris -- noted for dancing in fountains and the like.

Neither of them are particularly good parents, with Charles off drinking and Helen socializing. This, despite the presence of an adorable moppet, Vicki (Sandy Descher). Things only compound when they become suddenly wealthy, the result of some "worthless" oil fields in Texas that yield a gusher.

Very loosely based on a semi-autobiographical short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the film has a very episodic feel, with distinct movements as judged by the changes in Helen and Charles' relationship. Director Richard Brooks ("Blackboard Jungle") co-wrote the screenplay with the Epstein twins, Julius J. and Philip G.

The title comes from a song that was already a golden oldie when the movie came out. It actually won the Academy Award for Best Song for 1941's "Lady Be Good."

The film moves in slow waves and eddies, undulating toward a sad denouement and an uplifting finale. This is the sort of movie where a perfectly healthy woman in her 20s can fall deathly hill just be being exposed to some cold weather for a few minutes. It was either that, or somebody was going to get run over by a car and crippled.

The most interesting aspect of the film is underplayed criminally. Charles does not first meet Helen, but her older sister, Marion (Donna Reed). She clearly is smitten with him, but after arriving at the party she invited him to Charles is snatched up by Helen, whom he had briefly kissed as strangers during the VE celebration in the street.

Marion is very cold to Charles the rest of the movie, even after she marries a kindly French attorney. For his part, Charles is completely ignorant of her feelings. She despises him for never returning her love. But this is all kept very much in the background, until literally the second-to-last scene, where her husband chastises Marion and urges her not to let her contempt for Charles color her actions.

To me, the story of a love triangle that goes on for years, with a man reviled for loving the wrong sister, is much more interesting than the movie we get. Marion sort of flits in and out of the background, so her emotions never really have time to register. The whole movie seems like an overlong wasted opportunity.

A couple of other stars have notable but small supporting roles. Eva Gabor plays Lorraine, a professional divorcee who marries and casts aside rich men. Charles is assigned to profile her for his news service, and the two start up a chaste companionship. Meanwhile, Helen falls into the arms of Paul, an itinerant tennis pro played by Roger Moore in one of his very first screen roles.

Hopefully, I'll find more to like about Van Johnson's career than "The Last Time I Saw Paris."

Reeling Backward: "Raiders of the Seven Seas" (1953)

John Payne's beard was not very red, despite carrying the Spanish name for "Redbeard" in "Raiders of the Seven Seas," a film that at one time was to share the moniker if its main character, Barbarossa. But he's a stolid, charismatic presence in this mid-century example of B-movie high adventure, co-starring Donna Reed as the ubiquitous love interest.

The sea battles are just terrible, a mix of stock footage, chintzy-looking model ships and snippets from other movies. Director Sidney Salkow re-uses shots over and over again, including an exceedingly strange one of Barbarossa's merchantman seemingly plowing through the waves -- except it never moves forward.

Granted, this was low-budget spectacle. But compared to the magnificent sea battles in "Damn the Defiant!" from just nine years later, the ones in "Raiders" look positively amateurish.

Forget about historical accuracy -- the real Barbarossa was a 16th-century Ottoman who never made it west to the "Caribbes," where his film doppelganger plunders Spanish ships and townships with glee. He's got a writ from the opposing French government granting him authority to make war on their enemy, a common tactic during the golden age of piracy, when the line between outlaw and hero often grew faint.

Payne, best known for film noir roles and the lead in "Miracle on 34th Street" -- and also as screenwriting legend Robert Towne's father-in-law -- plays Barbarossa as a full-blooded man of passion. He loved gold, women, food and humiliating his enemies, and not necessarily in that order. Of course, his appetites are brought to heel by the attentions of a beautiful woman, Alida (Reed).

A noblewoman who acts as governor of Tortuga in her father's absence, the strong-willed Alida becomes Barbarossa's prize trophy, to be sold back to the Spanish for 50,000 pieces of goal. Her arranged-marriage fiance, Captain Jose Salcedo (Gerald Mohr), plays the heavy of the piece. He'd rather risk his would-be wife's life than pay the gold and give up a chance at Barbarossa's head.

Lon Chaney Jr. shows up as Peg Leg, a slave whom Barbarossa frees along with a whole galley of subjugated men. True to his name, Peg Leg is missing a limb, which of course the real Chaney did not. They use the old tie-the-leg-behind-him trick, complemented by an entire menagerie of objects and pieces of the set that conveniently get in the way of his profile. Still, you can see the ruse of you care to look closely enough.

Everyone in the movie speaks in an arch, oddly formal way as if they were addressing each other for posterity rather than mere communication. Salkow co-write the script with John O'Dea, filling it with familiar tropes of the buccaneer genre. A peppy little boy even shows up named Datu to act as the pirates' cheerleader and mascot; normally this sort of role is played by an ethnic minority to give the movie a little zing of exoticism, but here young Norwegian Skip Torgerson keeps things lilly-white.

The tiny scale of the film is easy to see in relation to what it is supposed to represent. Salcedo at one point has 1,500 Spaniard soldiers under his command, but somehow we never actually see more than 20 of them at once, and seemingly the same 20 over and over again. Similarly, Barbarossa eventually captures a whole fleet of ships, but they're seemingly manned by the same handful of henchmen.

"Raiders of the Seven Seas" isn't a bad movie, just a cheap one. It's the sort of thing you saw on the bottom of a double-feature back in the day, munched your popcorn and enjoyed, and quickly forgot about.

Reeling Backward: "From Here to Eternity" (1953)

Last year I wrote dismissively of the 1955 film "Battle Cry," with my chief complaint being that it was a war movie with very little war. The story mostly concerned itself with the various romances of the soldiers as they geared up for battle. When the fighting finally arrived, it was only a cursory bit near the end.

Only after recently reading Eli Wallach's autobiography did I realize that this narrative rather closely followed that of the revered classic "From Here to Eternity," which came out two years earlier and won a slew of Oscars, including Best Picture and statues for director, screenplay, supporting actor and actress and cinematography.

As to the latter, my guess is Burnett Guffey cemented his award for black-and-white photography with the now-iconic scene of Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr embracing on the beach as waves crash over them. It's a gorgeous scene, and technically difficult as hell -- shooting day for night, with a host of unpredictable elements.

The pair are nearly carried away by the waves, which were probably much more forceful than director Fred Zinnemann intended. According to legend they were supposed to kiss standing up, but Lancaster suggested they lie down. It's also notable that the camera is much more revealing of his body than hers, which is nearly hidden except for her head and shoulders.

So why is "Eternity" such a thrilling success while "Battle Cry" is an utter bore? The storytelling is much sharper, obviously, with Daniel Taradash's script based on the popular novel by James Jones. And the cast is just splendid -- in addition to Kerr and Lancaster there's Frank Sinatra and Donna Reed, Oscar winners both, plus Montgomery Clift in his prime. Ernest Borgnine and Jack Warden even have small roles.

The tale of how Sinatra got the role has entered into mythology, even being portrayed in "The Godfather" building up to the infamous horse-head-in-the-bed scene. It's no secret that Sinatra coveted the role and sent the studio chief many letters and telegrams, and agreed to a massive pay cut to secure the role. It's doubtful, though, that the Mafia actually played any role. In Wallach's version, he had discussions about the role but was never officially offered it. People forget Wallach was entirely a Broadway star at the time, and wouldn't even make his film debut till "Baby Doll" three years later.

It's interesting that the Lancaster/Kerr pairing is what most people remember about the movie. Watching it again recently, it's clear to me that it's really Clift's story, and everyone else around him is a supporting player. He's the nexus of the story -- every other character's tale is derived in relation to how they interact with his character, Private Robert E. Lee "Prew" Prewitt.

It's a bold, authentic portrait by Clift, who goes sideways from conventional Hollywood acting style. He plays Prewitt as a determined man who's defined by his principles, to the point that even those who like him think he's too stubborn for his own good. As the story opens, Prew has just requested a transfer out of the bugle corps because he lost his position as first bugler through favoritism -- absorbing a bust from corporal to private in the process.

Having suffered for his convictions, Prew is immediately forced to do so again: the company commander, Captain Dana Holmes (Philip Ober), demands that he resume his promising boxing career so his outfit can win the regional Army boxing championship. Prew refuses, and refuses to say why -- though he later reveals that he blinded a friend of his while sparring, and vowed never to fight again.

This sets off a long reign of quiet terror as the NCOs team up to give Prewitt "the treatment"  until he agrees to box again. This involves extra unpleasant detail work, being singled out for undeserved punishment, and outright physical abuse. Prewitt absorbs it all stoically, earning the silent approbation of First Sergeant Milton Warden (Lancaster), the "top kick" who really runs the company.

Sinatra plays Angelo Maggio, a skinny, tough kid from the Bronx who takes no guff from anyone. He repeatedly scrapes with "Fatso" Judson (Borgnine), the belligerent sergeant who runs the stockade. Fatso icily warns Maggio that he's the type of hothead who invariably ends up in the clink, where he'll receive a lesson or two. It turns out exactly that way, and Sinatra is a vivid presence as the proud, doomed Maggio.

Prewitt's love interest is Lorene (Reed), a hostess at the local members-only club for soldiers. (It's exclusive to only those with the $4 membership fee.) Her role is to entertain the men, flirt and be pleasant, a job she admits is just a couple of steps above working the street. Her plan is to save a bundle of money and return home to settle down with the right kind of man. But she finds herself drawn to the fatalistic Prewitt. He's so smitten he's even willing to go back on his word and start boxing again, if it means earning sergeant stripes so he can better take care of her.

Warden's affair is a risky one -- with his commanding officer's lonely wife, Karen (Kerr). It's a strange, antagonistic relationship where they end up sparring more than they do wooing. She has a reputation as a loose woman, something Warden repeatedly throws back in her face as a way of testing her feelings for him.

Both Kerr and Lancaster were nominated for Academy Awards in a leading role, although both are really supporting parts. I think the fact that they were big stars put them over the top.

The film also has a few notable musical interludes I'd forgotten about, including a couple where Prewitt improvises jazzy melodies on the bugle, and later just the bugle mouthpiece. He carries that mouthpiece around in his pocket like a totem, a signal to the world that he's a man who keeps himself to himself, except for the little bits he's willing to share on his own terms.

The war finally arrives with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. A lot of it is portrayed through stock footage and models of ships blowing up, but there are also some expertly-staged scenes with the company fighting off some Zeroes. But the action scenes are always subservient to the human drama.

In the end, the reason I prefer "From Here to Eternity" over "Battle Cry" is that it's simply a damn good movie.