Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde novella

Robert Louis Stevenson author

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Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
(1920, DVD)
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Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
(1931 and 1952, DVD)
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Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
(1931 and 1952, DVD)
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Jekyll and Hyde: The Musical
(2001, DVD)
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Mary Reilly
(1996, DVD)
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Strange Case of Dr Jekyll
and Mr Hyde

Stevenson's story of regressed human nature has captured filmmakers' imaginations, especially in the early days of cinema. As with Dracula and Frankenstein which deal with similar themes, the film versions have taken on lives of their own with quite different elements from the original work.

The dramatic concept of physical transformation between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde particularly suited itself to the visual form of the silent film and many early practitioners of the art adapted the story for the screen. One I would love to see is the 1920 film of F.W. Murnau, who two years later created the classic Nosferatu based on Dracula. As with Dracula, he is supposed to have neglected to buy the rights to Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and so his film, Der Januskopf (The Two-Faced Man), features a Dr. Warren and Mr. O'Connor. Alas, the film is said to be lost, with no copies intact.

BEFORE AND AFTER: John Barrymore as Dr. Jekyll, left, and Mr. Hyde.

Hammy Hyde
That same year, the first major American movie version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was produced, adapted actually from an 1887 stage play by Thomas Russell Sullivan. It's a rather plodding film, memorable mainly for a silent-screen appearance by the great John Barrymore. The alcoholic actor with his own Jekyll-and-Hyde public persona might have seemed a natural for the role and he makes the hammy most of the tortured doctor and his lascivious alter ego. The transformation of one to the other is remarkable because so few special effects are used: Barrymore writhes, messes up his hair and takes on a cunning expression. And it works. Before our eyes he becomes an entirely different being. It must have been startling for audiences in its day. That's old-style acting.

The movie opens with a printed statement: "In each of us, two natures are at war--the good and the evil. All our lives the fight goes on between them, and one of them must conquer. But in our hands lies the power to choose---what we want to be, we are." This psychobabble sets the tone for most film treatments of Stevenson's story. We're dealing with good and evil here, a struggle between our two equally powerful natures. A secondary theme, as in the Frankenstein movies, is that the scientist in his experimenting is playing God and deserves the fate of damnation that comes to him. This too carries right through all film versions.

The film also sets the pattern for future works by following Jekyll from the start, rather than revealing his duality near the end to solve a mystery as Stevenson does. And it introduces a love interest that isn't in the book, a young woman who pines for the handsome doctor. The doctor himself is at first a saint, devoting his life to healing the poor, and is only drawn to the dark side with the encouragement of a tempter, the girl's father. Then there's a subplot involving a bar performer and a ring containing poison. But most of the novella's elements come into play in some way and the whole tragedy is over in an hour and seven minutes.

Jesus-like Jekyll
The next major adaptation takes us into the early sound era with a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) that expands upon the Barrymore film's storyline. In the first few minutes Fredric March, who won an Academy Award for this performance, makes a dramatic speech in a medical lecture about the good and evil natures within each person and his attempts to separate them through chemistry—to liberate the good side. (Coincidentally, March was known before this film mainly for his stage and screen imitations of John Barrymore.) And the doctor's good side is very good—ridiculously so, actually. He's pretty near a Christ figure, as we're shown in scenes of him healing the sick and helping the lame to walk.

	BEFORE AND AFTER: Fredric March as Dr. Jekyll, left, and Mr. Hyde.

Again we follow Jekyll/Hyde almost exclusively, from his temptation by an older man to take up a life of dissipation (which he resists in saintly fashion), through his first transformations and his eventual addiction to the life of evil as Hyde. But the story is told with surprising sophistication for such an early film, with subjective camera perspectives, split screens and montages. However it ultimately collapses into a more conventional tale—a love story no less, as Jekyll's relationship with his long-waiting fiancée, the aristocratic Muriel (another character added by the Sullivan play and Barrymore film), takes centre stage. As does Hyde's brutal treatment of his bar-singer mistress, Ivy.

March's Jekyll is too self-righteously hammy but his Hyde is tremendous, a hairy athletic fellow, something like a wolf man. Scary vicious, but a wickedly clever animal. The transformation scenes are laughable by today's standards but state of the art for that time—better than in films a decade or more later.

The expanded plot takes over an hour and a half. And my, how rich everyone has gotten. The doctor, his lover, his friends—they all live in large-roomed mansions you've never seen outside old Hollywood movies.

On thing I like though is that the protagonist is called JEE-kul, as Stevenson intended.

Laidback Jekyll
The 1931 film was so successful, it was essentially remade ten years later. But the 1941 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, despite following its predecessor closely, feels different because Spencer Tracy is not the actor that Fredric March is. He's much better, in my opinion, but miscast in this role. His Jekyll is so low-key, so much like the priests and curmudgeonly pals Tracy normally plays, that it's hard to see the inner fire that drives the doctor. He's motivated by the desire to cure the insane, people whose good side has been taken over by the bad.

BEFORE AND AFTER: Spencer Tracy as Dr. Jekyll, left, and Mr. Hyde.

Tracy comes somewhat alive as Hyde though. After some awkward transformations through time-lapse photography, his villainous character is closer to Barrymore's than March's. He looks like Tracy's sleazier half-brother, with bushier eyebrows and darker complexion, but mainly achieving his effect through maniacally gleaming eyes and energetic body language. He's quietly chilling, not in a horror movie way but more like trusted friend you discover is capable of doing dreadful things.

The same love interests are back, this time named Beatrix and Ivy. The roles are played by Ingrid Bergman and Lana Turner, no less. But here's the catch: sex goddess Turner is the virginal fiancée Beatrix, while the esteemed Bergman takes the lesser role of saucy barmaid Ivy. And Bergman is radiant, just about stealing the film. You root for her to catch Jekyll's heart.

Many of the scenes play almost identically as in the 1931 film, with similar sets. I'm not sure why the former screenwriters and playwright were not credited. Hyde even does some of the same acrobatics as in the earlier film, jumping over banisters and bouncing off walls—though I detect the work of stuntmen this time.

And the good doctor's name is now pronounced as JECK-ul, though one character calls him JAY-kul.

By the way, watch for Brandon Hurst, the tempter in the 1920 Barrymore film, in an uncredited appearance as a butler in this movie.

Singing, dancing Hyde
In 2001 a filmed version of the long-running Broadway play Jekyll and Hyde: The Musical was unleashed on the pay-per-view, television-watching public. The hook was probably intended to be TV star and pop singer David Hasselhoff as the title character, a role he had assayed briefly in the theatre. But it's quite stagy, with unremarkable numbers sung with great gusto by all involved, and with live audience response.

Jekyll is revealed now to be haunted by the death of his father, whom he could not save. After his requests for research subjects are turned by a local institution, he turns to experimenting on himself. The storyline—or book as they call it in musical theatre—is otherwise similar to that of the movies, except with crowds of people taking the stage occasionally for song and dance numbers.

Hasselhoff is actually not bad—a good singer, an earnest actor—but the production sucks on TV. I understand a theatrical movie based on the musical is in the works for 2007 or later.

Modern monster
It sounds like a good idea: update the Jekyll/Hyde story with modern science in a contemporary setting. One can imagine sci-fi twists on the horror story and more realistic special effects unavailable to older filmmakers. But 2008's made-for-TV edition of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a dud.

Like almost all movie versions it follows the good doctor and his evil twin from the beginning, but now he's an outright serial killer. No villainous charisma, no exploration of man's animal nature—just another midnight strangler picking on single women in Boston. Dougray Scott, an accomplished actor in his forties (and best known for a regular stint on Desperate Housewives), does his best with it. His transformation into Hyde is accomplished with a minimum of makeup that reminds me of the wide-eyed on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Perhaps oddly, I kept thinking what a great James Bond the actor would make—a handsome hero with a dark heart, not to mention a Sean Connery accent (he's Scottish).

Partway through this film though, the plot takes a clichéd turn and becomes an episode of Law and Order. Jekyll is caught by police and prosecuted, and his lawyer (Krista Bridges) tries a novel defence to get him off: you see, Jekyll and Hyde are different people in the same body and now Hyde has been expunged, leaving only the innocent Jekyll.

And then there's the supposedly big twist at the very end, that you can probably guess even if you haven't seen all the hints leading up to it.

The film is populated by other characters updated from the novel, such as a male friend (Tom Skerritt) and Jekyll's caretaker (Danette Mackay), who always seem about to play significant roles in the drama but never do. One suspects their crucial scenes—showing the points of these characters—were edited out of the film when the final cut was stitched together.

It's TV all right. As cheap and predictable and shallow as anything else on the tube—more so, when one considers the depth of such heavy fare as Dexter, Six Feet Under or The Sopranos.

We await a compelling contemporary retelling of the timeless tale.

The monster and his lover
For a different take on the good-and-evil classic, you can try Mary Reilly (1996), It's not directly based on the Stevenson story but rather on a novel by Valerie Martin. The main incidents in the original tale are followed but the narrative focuses on the relation of a maid in the Jekyll household (a character I couldn't actually find in the original novella) with her master.

In the hands of sensitive director Stephen Frears (My Beautiful Laundrette, Dangerous Liaisons, The Queen), the film is atmospheric—all gloomy, misty, and moving at an excruciatingly deliberate pace. Julia Roberts submerges her movie star charisma beautifully into the meek, conflicted Mary—so much so that one wonders what draws Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde to her. Worse, one can't for the world understand what she sees in the effete boss or his violent alter-ego.

BEFORE AND AFTER: John Malkovich as Dr. Jekyll, left, and Mr. Hyde.

On paper John Malkovich sounds like a great Jekyll/Hyde, having played both aesthetes and villains to good effect. But there's too little difference between his personas in this piece. His Jekyll is obviously on the edge, nearly deranged, and his Hyde really looks like him—something one of the other servants mentions—except with much longer hair and minus the goatee. (How does that transformation take place?) Plus, Malkovich uses the same soft, prissy diction for both.

Mary soon learns Hyde is an out-of-control serial murderer, and yet she is obviously attracted to him—something to do with the flashbacks in which she is shown as child being tortured by her drunken father (Michael Gambon). I don't really want to ponder too long what this is trying to tell us.

Glenn Close essentially reprises her Cruella De Vil characterization from the Dalmations movies, now applying curled lips and hideous make-up to the role of a greedy bawdy-house madam, who makes the mistake of taking on Hyde.

Overall it's a dreary movie that never rises to the levels of drama or insight suggested by the premise of the Jekyll-and-Hyde story as seen by a household insider.

— Eric

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