The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945 Film) - Differences From The Novel

Differences From The Novel

Relationship to Sybil Vane

In Wilde's original, Sibyl Vane is a Shakespearean actress whom Dorian observes playing Juliet, rather than the gifted music-hall singer seen in this film. This necessitates altering Dorian's motive for breaking up with her. In the novel, her acting has become shallow as a result of really falling in love with Dorian, and his sense of illusion has been dissipated. In the film, she fails a virtue test which Dorian has been talked into by Lord Henry.

In the context of those confessions to Sibyl, the film has Dorian reading her a poem about cats and sensual temptation which he tells her is "by an Irishman named Oscar Wilde." It is, in fact, a very short excerpt from Oscar Wilde's 1894 poem "The Sphinx". Similarly, the use of Omar Khayam's poetry is distinctive to this film.

In the film, Sybil calls Dorian "Sir Tristan", in the novel "Prince Charming".

Dorian's final marriage

• In the novel, Dorian's final flirtation before his death is with a village girl; In the film, it is to Gladys. In the film, Gladys is Basil Hallward's niece, who had a childhood crush on Dorian, whereas in the novel Gladys is the Duchess of Monmouth, married to a sixty-year-old man, and the sister of Geoffrey Clouston (whose day of shooting is ruined when he kills James Vane).
• In the novel, Dorian's "good deed" that he hoped would finally change the portrait was to break up with Hetty Merton, the village girl, rather than to break up with Gladys.
• Dorian's body is found by Dorian's servants at the end of the novel, but by Gladys, Lord Henry, and Gladys' former suitor at the end of the film.

Miscellaneous

• Unlike the film, the novel has no reference to Dorian being painted with an Egyptian cat-shaped goddess who could grant his wish.
• In the novel, Henry's final speech to Dorian Gray about the soul being "non-material but corruptible" is one he claims to have heard from a street-preacher. In the film, Dorian hears these words himself from a street-preacher.