Albert Lewin

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From 1945 comes one of the best adaptations of Oscar Wilde’s only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Remarkably we get a dry and witty George Sanders (Addison DeWitt in All About Eve), a 20-year-old Angela Lansbury (Murder, She Wrote), an equally young Donna Reed (The Donna Reed Show), and fabulous Oscar-winning photography mixing black and white with a little splash of color for effect when they show the painting. The Picture of Dorian Gray is a unique fantasy horror film that could easily slip into your collection next to the moody Universal monster classics, but containing more subtlety and wit to write it off as merely a creature feature. Read More »

Lewin’s fascination with the exotic and the esoteric comes to a head in his final film. A British archaeologist working in Mexico becomes convinced that a local woman is actually the reincarnation of an Aztec princess. The idea of Mexico as a place where the archaic coexists with the modern fascinated foreigners from Antonin Artaud to William Burroughs. Having already juxtaposed the archaic and the modern in Pandora, Lewin revisits this trope here. The Living Idol dares the ridiculous (even) more than most other Lewin films, and doesn’t always pass the test. But its striking use of widescreen cinematography, as in the climactic moment of a sinister panther stalking a deserted Mexico City plaza, makes it a worthy companion to Dorian Gray and Pandora.Read More »