he setting is late 19th-century London. A long opening point-of-view shot introduces
us to the world as seen by the illustrious Dr. Henry L. Jekyll (March). He is privileged and
respected; he is kind but condescending toward his servants; he gives notorious scientific lectures that students attend for their sensational content but that the bearded eminences of the scientific establish consider shocking and mad. He spends much of his spare time providing free medical care to the pathetic cases on the charity ward, a practice his future father-in-law, the stuffy Brig. Gen. Danvers Carew (Halliwell Hobbes), considers beneath his station as a gentleman.
Jekyll, who struggles with the darker side of his nature, wants to marry his fiancee, Muriel (Hobart), right away, but the brigadier general is adamant: The pair must wait another eight months. Jekyll's all-consuming desire to have the wedding sooner seems less the result of the passionate love he declares, and more the need for immediate release from the prevailing social standards, which require him to repress just about every natural instinct he has.
The last straw is an encounter with Ivy Pearson (Hopkins), a sexy prostitute he rescues from an altercation on the street. Jekyll carries the injured woman to her flat and puts her to bed. The scene, which was shot shortly before the establishment of the production code that for many decades enforced severe (indeed, crippling) restrictions on sexual behavior in American film, heats up substantially when Ivy, taken by the handsome gentleman, moves his hand from the bruise he's examining to a more intimate spot on her inner thigh. She seductively peels off her stockings, tosses him the garter and demonstrates, with no subtlety whatsoever, that she's his for the taking, right now. (In just a few years, all of this would have been censored.) Jekyll is about to succumb to his impulses when he's interrupted by a scandalized associate. He walks away determined to continue his research into the separation of man's good and evil sides.
Back in his laboratory, Jekyll concocts a formula capable of releasing his inner beast. Writing a note to Muriel, in case it proves fatal, he takes a drink and, several seconds of anguished writhing later, emerges transformed into the fanged, simian reprobate Mr. Hyde (also March), whose first item of business is tracking down the sexy barmaid Ivy and claiming her as his own personal property—whether she wants anything to do with him or not ...
The best of many adaptations
Robert Louis Stevenson's original story, which was actually titled "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," is one of the most frequently adapted in film history, with one version released as early as 1908, and no fewer than six more produced by 1920 (and three in that year alone!). Many of these early versions are lost, some tragically so: Indeed, one, the German Der Januskopf (1920), was directed by the great impressionist director F.W. Murnau, best known for the classic 1922 vampire film Nosferatu. It was quite likely a masterpiece, even more intriguing in that it included one of the earliest screen appearances of the future Dracula Bela Lugosi, here playing a butler.
One of the few characters whose history on film seems about to enter its second century, Dr. Jekyll has been played, with varying degrees of success, by an impressive array of acting talents that includes John Barrymore, Conrad Veidt, Spencer Tracy, Kirk Douglas, Anthony Perkins, Michael Rennie, Jack Palance, John Malkovich and John Hannah. Most recently, the monstrous Hyde has even entered the CGI era, in the form of Hulk-sized versions who appeared in the awful Van Helsing and the slightly less awful League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
The Rouben Mamoulian version starring Fredric March didn't stop this parade of Hydes; indeed,
another version, this one a short, was released only a year later. But many consider Mamoulian's the very best. It certainly concocted one of the most creative approaches to handling the problem of Jekyll's on-screen transformation, in the era before CGI, when screen magic required ingenuity instead of a hard drive. March wore several different layers of makeup, some of which were invisible except when shot through different filters. As March performed the agony of transformation, Mamoulian switched filters and the darker shades of Hyde emerged in sharp relief. A cutaway hid the application of further makeup, sparing viewers the last moments of the transformation to Hyde, a very human but apelike creature, devoid of conscience but driven by carnal hungers.
Fredric March, whose long and distinguished career on film lasted from the silents until well into the 1970s, was one of those actors who grew more interesting as he aged and character began to etch its lines into his face; he was downright magnificent in Death of a Salesman (1951) and Inherit the Wind (1960), but his performance in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde hasn't aged quite as well to viewers of current vintage. Both sides of Dr. Jekyll's personality seem pitched for the rafters. His Jekyll is hammy in his lecture and romantic scenes, and his Hyde defines the phrase "over the top," to the point where he sometimes verges on ludicrous. He is, however, just as often effectively horrifying, especially in the several scenes where he terrorizes the prostitute, Ivy.
The animalistic Hyde basically shows up in the bar where she works, horrifying her by his appearance and demeanor, but informing her that she's now his personal property, not taking no for an answer. The scenes set in her flat, where he simultaneously demands her love and takes vicious pleasure in her revulsion, are downright brutal. Miriam Hopkins is heartbreaking as a once-confident woman now terrified, helpless and reduced to a cringing doormat. She's so very good, in fact, that today's viewers may find this film less the tragedy of a good man named Dr. Jekyll than that of a flawed woman named Ivy, who deserved better than either face of the troubled Victorian gentleman.
The film also deserves credit for its atmospheric setting. Foggy old London never looked more like a creepy, haunted place where inhuman monsters might be waiting around the next corner.
