The Effects Must Have Drunk the Same Potion
Today's review, and next in our mini-Jekyll and Hyde retrospective; the adaptation from 1931.
This version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was made the same year as Bela Lugosi’s Dracula and Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein, both of which have become iconic. While this movie isn’t quite as famous as those two, it’s still pretty decent. Sure, it’s melodramatic in a variety of ways, but it’s executed well…though there’s one largish exception to this.
This story follows the usual beats of Jekyll and Hyde adaptations, including the expected deviations. Dr. Jekyll (Fredric March)-which for some reason is pronounced “gee-kill” instead of “jeh-cull” this time around*-is a celebrated doctor who spends a lot of his time aiding the downtrodden, which creates some controversy among the upper classes. Their eyebrows go up even further when he claims there’s a way to separate the good and bad sides of our natures. Eventually, of course, he proves that he's right, creating a potion that turns him into the uninhibited Mr. Hyde, who spends most of his time terrorizing a young woman, Ivy Pearson (Miriam Hopkins). After a time, however, Jekyll vows to give Hyde up and devote himself to his work and his soon to be wife Muriel Carew (Rose Hobart). But of course, his evil side won’t be brought down that easily.
The thing that stood out most for me about the movie was the technical material, especially the camerawork. Unfortunately, this tended to be a bad thing more than a good thing. There are a variety of tricks used you wouldn’t expect to see in a 1931 movie-slow diagonal wipes, occasional first-person viewpoints, gradual fades overlaying one image over another-but they never seem to be used at times that make sense, or go on for too long, or sometimes continue even as the next scene has started. The only one that could have truly worked was the first person perspective, with subtle differences between Jekyll and Hyde’s viewpoints or a repeat of the first first-person scene, only now Hyde treats everyone badly, but other than using it for the first reveal of Hyde, this winds up going nowhere as well. Even the music gets in on the act, as the credits open with Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, aka the theme that’s now associated with horror and haunted houses (though to be fair, that may not have been quite as engrained in pop culture at the time). Maybe the effects helped contribute to the atmosphere back in 1931, but now, they’re mostly a distraction.
I also have issues with a lot of the things surrounding Jekyll. In addition to the odd name pronunciation, I feel like the movie takes too long showing us Jekyll’s bad side, as in the part of him he wants to isolate. For a decent stretch, he seems like a good person with barely any negative attributes. When the bad finally does show up, it’s a) too little too late, and b) feels a bit forced. Once he creates the potion, he just drinks it immediately instead of even making an attempt to test it on an animal or the like. Most notable of all, while the transformation scenes are fairly effective even today, the actual makeup for Hyde seems a little racist by today’s standards. I think the intent was for Hyde to look more like a caveman, since his emotions were more primal, but when his skin gets noticeably darker and his hair gets tighter and curlier, I can’t help but think the makeup department was hoping people’s minds would go to an alternate interpretation. I do want to stress, however, that March’s performance as both characters is absolutely fine. I have no complaints on that front; it’s everything else that gets to me.
While this isn’t a bad interpretation of the Jekyll and Hyde story, it’s also a little too cliché and artsy for me. I’d only recommend seeing it if you’re an old horror movie buff or doing a Jekyll and Hyde retrospective like I am. I will say, though, that this version had more interesting, or at least less unpleasant, talking points than the remake made about a decade later.
CAT ALERT: There are actually two, one small and one a bit more significant. Early on in the movie, before Jekyll’s even transformed into Hyde, we see a cat running along the side of the frame, obviously to add a little color to the street Jekyll and his friend are walking along. Much later, Jekyll is admiring a bird singing in a tree, and then a cat comes along and eats it (offscreen). The symbolism is blindingly obvious, especially since witnessing this helps trigger Jekyll’s first involuntary transformation into Hyde. The cat’s even black for maximum point-driving. But even if it’s a bit on the nose, I’m not going to complain about it. At least it was a cat and a bird and not a cat and a dog.
*I recently found out that “Gee-kill” was Robert Louis Stevenson’s preferred pronunciation, both because that’s how you’d say it in Scottish and because it allowed it to rhyme with “seek”, thus creating some wordplay. However, I think this may be one of the only adaptations that’s followed that guideline.
This version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was made the same year as Bela Lugosi’s Dracula and Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein, both of which have become iconic. While this movie isn’t quite as famous as those two, it’s still pretty decent. Sure, it’s melodramatic in a variety of ways, but it’s executed well…though there’s one largish exception to this.
This story follows the usual beats of Jekyll and Hyde adaptations, including the expected deviations. Dr. Jekyll (Fredric March)-which for some reason is pronounced “gee-kill” instead of “jeh-cull” this time around*-is a celebrated doctor who spends a lot of his time aiding the downtrodden, which creates some controversy among the upper classes. Their eyebrows go up even further when he claims there’s a way to separate the good and bad sides of our natures. Eventually, of course, he proves that he's right, creating a potion that turns him into the uninhibited Mr. Hyde, who spends most of his time terrorizing a young woman, Ivy Pearson (Miriam Hopkins). After a time, however, Jekyll vows to give Hyde up and devote himself to his work and his soon to be wife Muriel Carew (Rose Hobart). But of course, his evil side won’t be brought down that easily.
The thing that stood out most for me about the movie was the technical material, especially the camerawork. Unfortunately, this tended to be a bad thing more than a good thing. There are a variety of tricks used you wouldn’t expect to see in a 1931 movie-slow diagonal wipes, occasional first-person viewpoints, gradual fades overlaying one image over another-but they never seem to be used at times that make sense, or go on for too long, or sometimes continue even as the next scene has started. The only one that could have truly worked was the first person perspective, with subtle differences between Jekyll and Hyde’s viewpoints or a repeat of the first first-person scene, only now Hyde treats everyone badly, but other than using it for the first reveal of Hyde, this winds up going nowhere as well. Even the music gets in on the act, as the credits open with Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, aka the theme that’s now associated with horror and haunted houses (though to be fair, that may not have been quite as engrained in pop culture at the time). Maybe the effects helped contribute to the atmosphere back in 1931, but now, they’re mostly a distraction.
I also have issues with a lot of the things surrounding Jekyll. In addition to the odd name pronunciation, I feel like the movie takes too long showing us Jekyll’s bad side, as in the part of him he wants to isolate. For a decent stretch, he seems like a good person with barely any negative attributes. When the bad finally does show up, it’s a) too little too late, and b) feels a bit forced. Once he creates the potion, he just drinks it immediately instead of even making an attempt to test it on an animal or the like. Most notable of all, while the transformation scenes are fairly effective even today, the actual makeup for Hyde seems a little racist by today’s standards. I think the intent was for Hyde to look more like a caveman, since his emotions were more primal, but when his skin gets noticeably darker and his hair gets tighter and curlier, I can’t help but think the makeup department was hoping people’s minds would go to an alternate interpretation. I do want to stress, however, that March’s performance as both characters is absolutely fine. I have no complaints on that front; it’s everything else that gets to me.
While this isn’t a bad interpretation of the Jekyll and Hyde story, it’s also a little too cliché and artsy for me. I’d only recommend seeing it if you’re an old horror movie buff or doing a Jekyll and Hyde retrospective like I am. I will say, though, that this version had more interesting, or at least less unpleasant, talking points than the remake made about a decade later.
CAT ALERT: There are actually two, one small and one a bit more significant. Early on in the movie, before Jekyll’s even transformed into Hyde, we see a cat running along the side of the frame, obviously to add a little color to the street Jekyll and his friend are walking along. Much later, Jekyll is admiring a bird singing in a tree, and then a cat comes along and eats it (offscreen). The symbolism is blindingly obvious, especially since witnessing this helps trigger Jekyll’s first involuntary transformation into Hyde. The cat’s even black for maximum point-driving. But even if it’s a bit on the nose, I’m not going to complain about it. At least it was a cat and a bird and not a cat and a dog.
*I recently found out that “Gee-kill” was Robert Louis Stevenson’s preferred pronunciation, both because that’s how you’d say it in Scottish and because it allowed it to rhyme with “seek”, thus creating some wordplay. However, I think this may be one of the only adaptations that’s followed that guideline.