Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde (DVD)

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1941 Version:
MGM decided to remake "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" as a prestige production and lavished a good deal of money on it. They hired Victor Fleming, hot off "Gone With the Wind" and "The Wizard of Oz," to direct, and they signed prominent actor Spencer Tracy, relative newcomer to American films Ingrid Bergman, and screen siren Lana Turner to star. The film is less an outright horror film than its predecessor and more a straightforward psychological study, which may not please all viewers. Most of the earlier sex is replaced by a stubborn, straightlaced morality. Hollywood had apparently learned its lesson and didn't want any problems with the more rigid censorship of the early forties. Too bad.

Tracy himself insisted that this "Jekyll and Hyde" be no mere fright flick and that his character be fleshed out as a sadly disturbing human being. If anything, it tends to make the film look more old-fashioned than the 1931 release. Oddly, the studio cast Turner as Jekyll's sweet, prudish fiancée, this time called Beatrix Emery, and Bergman as the coy, temperamental barmaid, this time called Ivy Peterson. You'd have thought it would have been the other way around, but the results are fine, even if Bergman seems a bit too cultured for the street snipe she plays. Just as oddly, the studio allowed Tracy and Turner to retain their American accents while encouraging Bergman to effect a British Cockney dialect (to emphasize her character's lower class). This circumstance requires a dedicated suspension of disbelief on the viewer's part as Bergman slips back and forth between her own pronounced Swedish intonations and the Cockney inflections she's attempting to emulate. Oh, well. Her scenes with Tracy are far less torrid than the ones between March and Hopkins, so the censors saw little problem with the picture. Also too bad.

In this version, as I've said, the emphasis has been altered. Jekyll wants more than to release the evil in one's soul; he wants to find the good in the most wicked of men. It is a more noble ambition, but it makes for a far less interesting movie. Even Tracy's makeup is less intense than March's. Where March became a fanged monster, Tracy becomes merely a sinister brute. The latter is more realistic, to be sure, but less intriguing and a whole lot less fun.

I liked both versions, but I have to admit I liked the earlier, more melodramatic account better. It offers more energy and more pure animal fervor, even if parts of it are, frankly, more corny. Still, both movies are fascinating translations of a tale most of us know by heart, and for anyone interested in the art of filmmaking they represent two very different approaches to essentially the same subject matter.

Video:
Both versions come off pretty well visually, thanks to the care with which Warner transferred them to disc. A fairly high bit rate is used in both cases, less compression ensuring a cleaner image and deeper black-and-white contrasts. Using the best possible prints helped, too, and there are few age marks on either of them, except in the 1932 version near the ends of reels where film stock generally shows the greatest wear. The 1932 version looks very good for its date of origin; the 1941 version looks good for any date. In fact, the 1941 version is almost faultless, with the exception of some very minor halos, and fairly glistens with luster. There's a crystalline clarity to the black-and-white images that makes them seem almost three-dimensional.

Audio:
The 1932 version suffers the most sonically, even though Mamoulian must be credited for doing as much as he could with the early sound. The audio is reproduced in Dolby Digital 1.0 mono, and while it's quite limited in frequency and dynamic range, it's good for conveying dialogue at the very least. Overall, the 1932 version is a bit scratchy, but there is surprisingly little noise present, only a slight background sizzle. The 1941 version shows a marked improvement in sound quality over its earlier counterpart. It is still understandably constricted in its frequency and dynamic extremes, but it is smoother and more realistic in its tonal balance than the earlier issue and, consequently, easier on the ears.

Extras:
The disc's primary bonus is having two films on it, of course, but in addition we get an excellent audio commentary on the 1932 version by author and film historian Greg Mank. Mr. Mank is wonderfully informative and amusing, too, and anyone who buys the disc should be sure to give the 1932 version a second go-round with Mank's comments. Note that he points out all the more scandalous parts of the film, a definite plus. As another bonus we find the 1955 Bug Bunny Looney Tunes cartoon "Hyde and Hare," twenty-five and twenty-eight scene selections, and a theatrical trailer for the 1941 version. English is the only spoken language provided, but there are subtitles in English, French, and Spanish.

Parting Thoughts:
"I began to be tortured with throes and longings, as of Hyde struggling after freedom; and at last, in an hour of moral weakness, I once again compounded and swallowed the transforming draught.... My devil had been long caged. He came out roaring." --R.L. Stevenson

The 1932 version of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" not only won an Academy Award for Fredric March, it was nominated in two other categories as well, Best Writing and Best Cinematography. The 1941 version is a more philosophical take on the story and a more lush production, and while it won no awards (though it was nominated for Best Music, Cinematography, and Editing), Tracy probably should have been at least nominated. Neither film is a classic, but having them together on a single disc makes for an attractive comparison.

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