Cosmos Ottinger movie program - Dorian Gray im Spiegel der Boulevardpresse

Our Group will create a person whom we will shape according to our ideas and lead as we see fit.

Dorian Gray - young, rich, beautiful.

We will build him up, seduce him, destroy him.

Dr. Mabuse, screenplay excerptThe film title corresponds to the movie in the complexity of its meaning. The most obvious association is with Dorian Gray, i.e. the literary one; on the other hand, narcissism, dandyism, fin de siècle. In the mirror of the tabloid press - already known as social news in Proust's time - I took it as an example to say something about a new form of exercising power in film, about the specific possibilities of a media corporation.

Ulrike Ottinger in conversation with Sissi Tax, February 1984