Based on Oscar Wilde’s 1890/1891 novella of the same name, Lewin’s 1945 take on The Picture of Dorian Gray introduces an ancient Egyptian cat statuette to the story. This statuette plays a significant role in the narrative, implied to be a representation of a deity who grants Dorian’s wish to remain young, while the recently painted portrait of him (executed by the painter Basil Hallward) grows old instead. When Dorian utters this wish aloud, another character, Lord Henry, reproaches him:

You oughtn’t to express such a wish in the presence of that cat, Dorian. It’s one of the seventy-three great gods of Egypt and is quite capable of granting your wish.

While there is little to suggest the cat as a particularly appropriate sacred symbol in ancient Egypt for bringing this dark wish to fruition, the statuette features ominously in many of the early shots in the film, in which it seems to loom behind Dorian. Dorian’s fiancée (whom he later drives to suicide by rejecting her) comments that she thinks she has seen its eyes move, and Dorian admits that the statuette frightens him, all of which draws upon the occult connotations of ancient Egyptian artefacts in the popular imaginary. It raises questions as to whether we might more accurately refer to the granted wish as a curse, given the indelible association between ancient Egyptian artefacts – especially those removed from their country of origin – and ill-fate. That the cat features in the painted portrait of – and is the one feature that stays the same between the image of the portrait as it is first painted and the hideous version at the end of Dorian’s life – suggests that Egypt represents a kind of timeless unchanging quality that Dorian attempts (and fails) to replicate.

Author: Eleanor Dobson