Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde (DVD)

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Why did Dr. Jekyll go to Florida?
To tan his Hyde.

That joke is probably older than either of the motion pictures on this disc, but it goes to show how universally recognizable the characters are. Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 novella, "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," which tells of human nature's dark side, has been filmed a score or more times, but the two versions brought together here are among the very best. The first, a Paramount production, is from 1932, directed by Rouben Mamoulian and starring Fredric March and Miriam Hopkins. The second, an MGM feature, is from 1941, directed by Victor Fleming and starring Spencer Tracy and Ingrid Bergman.

The nice thing about this double feature disc is that a viewer doesn't have to chose between the two renditions trying to decide which one is best. (Not that the viewer won't have a favorite.) They're both different enough from one another in tone and flavor for a person to find something of interest in each. In other words, it's a win-win situation.

1932 Version:
Director Rouben Mamoulian was a passionate and innovative filmmaker, and these qualities show up in his 1932 take on the Stevenson classic. The film actually premiered on New Year's Eve 1931, but who's to quibble. Mamoulian's account was a smash hit and is notable in four major areas: the acting, the makeup, the cinematic expression, and the censorship.

The kindly and celebrated physician Dr. Henry Jekyll is played by a very young and very handsome Fredric March, who won the Academy Award that year for his performance. (For those of you too young to remember, March was one of America's great actors, winning another Oscar in 1947 for "The Best Years of Our Lives" and being nominated for three more films in his long career.) Anyway, Dr. Jekyll's startling theory is that man's inner soul must somehow be freed of its evil self, an evil that will eventually wither and die if left on its own, if the potential for pure good in man can prevail. Consequently, he invents a potion that does that very thing; it releases the dark side of Man, turning him into a beast, literally lusting after the things his respectable Jekyll half had to try to repress.

March's portrayal of Jekyll is anything but remarkable--a mild-mannered, sophisticated man of even temperament, he would rather be spending his time treating charity patients than tending to his social obligations as a member of London's upper crust. But it is for Hyde, his alter ego, that March is remembered. His Hyde, a hideous yet not entirely repulsive character, is charming, happy-go-lucky, you could say, when he makes his first appearance. Hyde seems positively delighted with his newfound freedom from the propriety-bound Jekyll. But as the story goes on, Hyde loses all touch with all human decency, becoming more bestial and disintegrating into pure wickedness. March's delineation of this decline is a joy, the actor going over the top on occasion, to be sure, in the exaggerated manner of performances in early talking pictures but generally keeping the character grounded in a cinematic realism.

Playing the two female leads are Miriam Hopkins as Ivy Pearson, a dance-hall entertainer and lady of dubious reputation, and Rose Hobart as Muriel Carew, Dr. Jekyll's demure fiancée. Of the two women, it is Ms. Hopkins who gives the standout performance, as might be expected of the juicier role. It's a wonder, indeed, that she was not at least nominated for an Academy Award, but perhaps the sedate Academy thought her too earthy or too carnal to be considered. In any case, she is quite persuasive as the jauntily flirtatious and later extremely terrified Ivy.

March's makeup is equally to be credited for the film's success. Through a combination of camera filters and overlays, Jekyll's transformation is convincing even by today's standards of special effects. In the beginning, I thought the makeup too grotesque, the apelike hair and projected fangs making Hyde look almost comical, but March takes such joy in his new appearance, so do we. Then, as the picture goes on, each of Hyde's subsequent transformations make him ever more horrid, the final makeup job not only causing March much discomfort but putting him into the hospital for several weeks after the filming ended. The actor was fortunate not to have sustained permanent disfigurement.

In terms of its style, the film is well advanced for its time. Mamoulian wheels his camera in around his sets with uncanny ease, using a special enclosure to keep the sound of the mechanism quiet. He effectively uses light and shadows to create the proper eerie atmosphere for a thriller. And he indulges in a number of point-of-view shots, just becoming known as "subjective" photography, where we see things from the character's perspective. Apparently, this technique was so new that the studio, Paramount, didn't trust how audiences would react to it and cut some of it out of the opening scenes. Fortunately, Warner Bros. have restored as much lost footage as possible to present the film pretty much it looked on opening night.

Which brings up the final point: Censorship. Although the film was passed by the National Board of Review as well as studio bosses, the film contained so many objectionable scenes it was seldom shown in its original state after local censors around the world watched it. The very nature of Jekyll's predicament, his repressed sexual frustration over not being able to marry his fiancée until her father says so and the consequent release of this frustration as Hyde, must have itself been a pain for the censors to accept. Again, WB have restored everything that is still available, including some brief, discreet nudity, some admittedly steamy sexual innuendos, and some scenes of violence thought too intense for the day. The censorship problems only increased the film's box office appeal.