DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE
US, 1931, 98 minutes, Black and white.
Fredric March, Miriam Hopkins, Rose Hobart, Halliwell Hobbs.
Directed by Rouben Mamoulian.
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is one of the most filmed novels of the 19th century, Robert Louis Stevenson’s masterpiece (along with Treasure Island and Kidnapped). It had been filmed in a silent version of 1920 with John Barrymore as Dr Jekyll.
This was the first sound version. Rouben Mamoulian had come from Germany and had begun to direct, City Streets and Applause. However, in his thirty years career, he was to make comparatively few films, only about twenty. However, he spent a great deal of time directing theatre. Some of his films include Love Me Tonight, Queen Christina, Becky Sharp (the first colour film), Golden Boy, The Mark of Zorro.
This was the breakthrough performance by Fredric March who won an Oscar. (He was to win another Oscar in 1946 for The Best Years of Our Lives.) March is persuasive both as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – especially with the sinister make-up for Mr Hyde. Miriam Hopkins in an early role as the prostitute Ivy (some of the sequences look far more permissive than one might expect – this was filmed before the imposition of the Motion Picture Code.
The next version came only ten years later with Spencer Tracy, Ingrid Bergman and Lana Turner. There have been many versions since, especially for television. There have also been some parodies: Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hype.
1. The popularity of Stevenson's story? The interest of the story and its themes? Audience expectations about the theme, the horror?
2. The film as an example of early thirties film-making? The establishing of cinema traditions? In terms of horror? Sound being new at the time? The use of such techniques as the subjective camera at the beginning, the use of mirrors, the change from Jekyll to Hyde, the drama of the chases?
3. The sets, costumes, decor, locations, atmosphere and music? Their contribution to the horror genre and the exploration of serious themes?
4. How did the film reflect the manners of the 19th century, the preoccupation with repression of evil, the scientific opening up of psychology? The traditions of science fiction and horror blended in this story and its film treatment?
5. The portrayal of Dr Jekyll as a normal personality? What kind of person was he, strengths and weaknesses of his character? His ambitions an a scientist? His attitude towards society, his experiments, ambitions and goals, the risks he was prepared to take, his selfishness? His way of life as illustrated in his house, for example the relationship with his servant? His relationship to others and fellow scientists?
6. The reason for his experiments, the risk of the transformation? Comment on the film's techniques for the transformation. The effect on Jekyll? The characteristics of Hyde? The two aspects of the one personality? The types of evil manifestation in drink, coarse grossness, lust and brutality? The detailed presentation of this and the contrast with Jekyll?
7. The counterbalance of Hyde with Jekyll and his fiancee, her aristocratic world, her father, the engagement, society dinners and dances?
8. The world of Hyde and Ivy? Ivy's world of the tavern, her singing, her tenement room? Her character in itself? As being possessed by Hyde? The victim of his cruelty?
9. The repercussions of violence unleashed from the inner being? The effect on Jekyll? The deaths of Ivy and his fiancee's father?
10. The growing desperation and lack of control in the change? The wages of pride and science?
11. How melodramatic the desperate finale, locking himself in the laboratory, the shooting?
12. How valuable a fable bout the depths of human nature is this story? The good and evil in human nature? The impact of a morality fable?
