Support Frock Flicks with a small donation! During Snark Week and beyond, we’re grateful for your monthly pledges for exclusive content via Patreon or your one-time contributions via Ko-fi or PayPal to offset the costs of running this site. You can even buy our T-shirts and merch. Think of this like supporting public broadcasting, but with swearing and no tax deductions!
I’m rather a fan of Oscar Wilde‘s work and his life story. There are some quite lovely and historically accurate versions of his plays onscreen, plus a few solid biopics. Alas, Dorian Gray (2009) and Salome’s Last Dance (1988) are neither.
Now, it’s high time for an updated adaption of The Picture of Doran Gray. The 1945 version was excellent as far as the story and acting goes but the supposed Victorian setting and costumes were pathetic. This 2009 edition is the inverse — the movie plot messes around with Wilde’s story and the acting is wooden, but the Victorian settings and costumes are rather decent. C’mon, Hollywood or the BBC or someone, can’t we get it all together for a change?
Colin Firth slums it as Lord Henry, the debauched aristo who drags Dorian down with him.
The only real costumes worth snarking are those worn by Dorian’s first love, Sibyl Vane. She’s a young actress who dresses like a 12-year-old girl with her hair always down and wearing flimsy blouses and skirts.
Cute, but not 1890s unless the hair’s up & maybe you add some kind of jacket.
When she visits Dorian’s house for a shag, she wears a different blouse/skirt combo that looks like it’s from Anthropologie or some other boho hipster joint.
I suppose that could be a corset under her blouse, but why, then, is she wearing such a thin blouse?
Oh and Dorian doesn’t help because he gifts her this pre-raphaelite fantasy princess dress:
That she wears later. How is that anything 19th-century?
She also owns a hair crimper, apparently.
But the main gist of the flick is Dorian partying and getting down with his bad self.
Shaving nicks are his kink?
The movie adds onto Wilde’s novel so that Dorian ages — without appearing to age — so much so that he can hook up with Lord Henry’s daughter, who was born at the start of the movie.
And looks like a precursor to that shitty Netflix Persuasion instead of being a 1910s lady.
While I can’t be totally blamed for hoping Dorian Gray would have some redeeming qualities, I really only have myself to blame for attempting to watch Salome’s Last Dance. It’s a Ken Russell flick, after all, so the weirdness is baked right in. The premise is that Oscar Wilde visits a whorehouse, where the proprietor puts on a production of Wilde’s banned play Salome, with the prostitutes as the actors. That explains all the free-swinging boobs, I guess, but it doesn’t explain the heavy use of glitter and lurex. This movie does get one point for literary authenticity since the play-within-the-movie does use a great deal of Wilde’s actual text from Salome.
I’ve screencapped out the boobs so this post is moderately more safe for work. *Moderately* given the material.
The soldiers are in leather thongs & the serving girls wear gold cheerleader skirts plus frizzy blonde ponytails. Don’t as me why, I just work here.
The main character of Salome gets the most elaborate costume along with the most lines.
The real Oscar Wilde had Sarah Bernhardt rehearsing this play in Paris, so I don’t know what he’d think of this overwrought production.
Did glitter eye makeup exist in the 1890s? Discuss.
If that was a more Victorian corset on top, I’d have an easier time buying this as a period stage costume.
If you wanted to recreate this costume, you could get the American Duchess Star Princess Camille Boots in silver & blue, for starters.
What’s the father-daughter version of an Oedipal relationship? Yeah.
The highlight (or lowlight, depending on your tastes) is when Salome does the infamous Dance of the Seven Veils. I didn’t screencap the big reveal because if you’re going to bother watching, you really should get the payoff yourself. Trying to keep it less than X-rated today!
She wears this fancy crown for the dance tho’.
Having danced, she asks for one thing: Bring me the head of John the Baptist!
The art direction is effective, that’s for sure.
She gets her wish …
Much like Colin Firth showing up in Dorian Grey, our revered Glenda Jackson turns up as Salome’s mom, Herodias.
Epic theatrical makeup.
Within the movie, she’s the posh Lady Alice Fitz-Kensington Windsor, who played the part for kicks and delivers the final film line.
Salome is more of a ride than Dorian, though I don’t know how much I’d recommend it…
Apparently in 2021 a filmed “modern” version of Wilde’s book came out. Amazing cast – Fionn Whitehead, Russell Tovey, Stephen Fry, Joanna Lumley, but I just heard of it, so probably not so good. Here is the link on IMDB — Prime has it but charges for it — https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14157114/. Wish it was period.
The dress Dorian gifts his lady looks straight out of Gunne Sax circa 1970s
When I first saw that Stephen Fry was in it, I got over it not being period, but I assumed he was Lord Harry, not just “The Interviewer”. Ugh…
I enjoyed the nuttiness of Russell’s film. It’s so… Ken Russell.
At no time, like in “The Devils” or “Listomania”, is it supposed to be taken as “real”.
And, I knew this but looked it up anyway: “ Imogen Millais-Scott went blind three weeks before filming after contracting glandular fever but Russell insisted on still using her.”
I can’t fault anything that you’ve said, as it’s all true. I still kind of love Salome’s Last Dance and it’s become a sewing movie for me. Not a thing about it could possibly claim any sort of historic authenticity; I guess I’ll just have to plead ‘Ken Russell’ and be done with it.
I admit, I’m a sucker for a Ken Russel flick. They’re absolute ludicrous garbage. But I’m drawn like a moth to the flame. Of the historicals, I think Liztomania is the only one I haven’t inflicted on myself, & that’s only bec. I haven’t stumbled across it. But some Snark Week…
For all the 2009 Dorian Gray was a dumpster fire, at least Ben Barnes was less of a paper-thin poncing pretty boy than Stuart Townsend in the League of Extraordinary Gentleman (who might as well have had “I’m a double agent” tattooed on his forehead).The sound effects of the painting’s wheezing legitimately terrified me when I first watched it.
The father daughter version of an Oedipus complex is Electra complex.
In all fairness, Dorian Gray being decorative, but not very clever, IS on-brand…
My objection is that he’s supposed to be the mole, up until the point he reveals himself to be assisting the villain (to the point the League suspects another member who conveniently goes missing at the same time), but Townsend is doing so much mustache twirling and smarming from scene 1 that it’s damn obvious that the character is teh evulz.
I’m willing to allow it, on the understanding that it’s cartoon reverse psychology: he’s so blatant about being a villain that everyone assumes he’s too stupid to get away with ANYTHING (It’s much, much more amusing to imagine everyone is shocked by the fact Gray has been an effective mole than by the fact he was The Mole all along).
Ben Barnes and Colin Firth appeared together in ‘Easy Virtue’ and ‘Dorian Gray’ pretty much back to back, and while neither movie was good, the press interviews they did together were enormously endearing. You could tell they really liked working together! Worth a watch on YouTube.
I’ve had the hots for Binbons literally since ‘Prince Caspian,’ and WOW does he keep getting better with age. He mostly appears in fantasy stuff now, so there’s probably not enough for a MCM, but GOD. He sings, he’s gorgeous, and he’s hilarious in interviews. Don’t tell my husband, but Binbons is pretty much my perfect man.
The Barnes/Firth bits were mildly entertaining, but I kept wanting them to go further with it, really chew the scenery more. It would have suited!
Hey, Colin Firth has to worry about making his OLD Wilde Bunch chum jealous – he’s clearly saving the best stuff for a Wilde adaptation that casts himself, Mr Barnes AND Mr Rupert Everett! (-;
…
Having said that (and apropos of nothing) I remain at least a little surprised that no casting directors ever seem to have considered casting Mr Everett & Mr Firth as Holmes and Watson.
I’m always in favor of a Dorian Gray adaptation. Even though there were problems with the Ben Barnes version, I liked it…and he was….beautiful!!!!!!! Someone mentioned Stuart Townsend in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and as one of ten people who saw it in the theaters, let me just say that he was….beautiful!!!! As was Reeve Carney in Penny Dreadful. In other words, I’m always up for a story with a beautiful man!!
I am a total Wilde acolyte and absolutely loved Salome’s Last Dance when I was a young teenager. It had everything that appealed to me at the time; campy debauchery, the glorious Glenda Jackson and a large percentage of it’s text being Oscar’s own words – at his most theatrical in an aesthetic movement manner, flowery and poetic… then I re-watched it a couple of years ago… and, well, yes. It certainly is… something and the stage costumes are certainly striking. I was left though feeling quite bemused and began to wonder what drugs I was on at the time of my initial viewing. It certainly leaves you with the impression of having dropped a tab or two. Though I think this may well be a Ken Russell thing. I loved his film Gothic at around the same time as when I was introduced to his Salome feature and LOVED that too… and now that film just leaves me feeling slightly uncomfortable and suffering a slight headache. It is strange how your perception of art changes as you get older. I hated The recent film version of The Picture of Dorian Grey. It seemed to completely lack any of Wilde’s subtlety, nuance and poetry and I hated the design in general.
“feeling slightly uncomfortable and suffering a slight headache” — great summation of watching a Ken Russel flick!