Dr. Mabuse (Delphine Seyrig), the president of a multinational press conglomerate, has an unscrupulous plan for the company's business expansion. “Our company will create a human being whom we can shape according to our requirements and control according to our wishes. Dorian Gray: young, wealthy, handsome. We shall construct him, corrupt him and destroy him.”
“The Image of Dorian Gray in the Yellow Press owes less to Oscar Wilde's fin-de-siècle novel, whose youthful dandy protagonist is the model for the Dorian in this film, than it does to the fantastic obsession with the total media manipulation in German Expressionist Cinema. Ulrike Ottinger's ironic references to the world of Dr. Mabuse align past with modern apprehensions about the function of the media, at the same time as they call into question the myth of total manipulation. The magnificent, simultaneous double ending plays out both Dorian as victim of the media tycoon and as her best pupil. The film is the last in a trilogy by Ottinger which includes Ticket of No Return and Freak Orlando; it continues in the same episodic-narrative style coupled with the challenge of collage techniques.” Roswitha Mueller
Note: Also shown at the York Theater, S.F. on July 22 as part of the series Women Make Movies.