Hydeing the Violence
Today's review, and next in our retrospective: the 1941 version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a remake of sorts of the 1931 version.
I was mostly curious about the 1941 version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde because the title role(s) was played by Spencer Tracy, an actor I’ve really come to admire over the years. Seeing him play a hero and a villain in one movie sounded like it had potential. And while his performance was fine, I have to admit that wasn’t what I wound up focusing on most of the time.
The story follows a lot of the same beats as the 1931 version, though there have been some name changes. Dr. Jekyll (Tracy) is convinced that science is capable of removing the evil from people and leaving only the good. Most people he tells this to are skeptical at best and disapproving at worst, including Sir Charles Emery (Donald Crisp), the father of Jekyll’s fiancée Beatrix (Lana Turner). As must happen in this story, Jekyll eventually creates a potion that can accomplish his goal, and he tests it on himself, leading to the birth of his dark alter-ego Mr. Hyde. While Hyde enjoys inciting fights and causing injuries, most of his wickedness is focused on a barmaid named Ivy (Ingrid Bergman), who Jekyll ran into one night and had a bit of an attraction towards. Eventually, Jekyll realizes he needs to stop, and plans to give up the Hyde persona. Naturally, it’s not that simple…
The first thing that really caught my attention about the movie was the visual portrayal of Hyde. I get the impression that a lot of adaptations make Hyde look like a monster, probably for maximum horror/drama. In this version, the crew definitely applied makeup to differentiate Jekyll and Hyde, but it was a lot more subtle than I expected. When Hyde first looks at himself in the mirror, I kept fluctuating between wondering if anything had changed and feeling like Tracy looked like a different person entirely. Eventually I figured out that they’d darkened his hair and made it more wild, made his eyes more sunken and baggy while also having Tracy widen his eyes, and put veneers on his teeth so they had more impact when he bared them in a grin. We later get to see the transformation from Jekyll to Hyde and back so you can watch the process, and while there’s a clear change, it’s nowhere near as large a change as you’d think. I do appreciate the decision not to go overboard, though it does make it harder to believe that nobody could tell who Hyde really was.
The other thing that stood out to me in the movie was the material surrounding Ivy, which was simultaneously good and bad for the movie. The reason it’s bad for the movie is twofold. One, it paints Jekyll in a bad light. Shortly after Jekyll successfully transforms into Hyde for the first time, Emery takes Beatrix to Europe for a long stretch because of Jekyll’s behavior (Hyde actually has nothing to do with this; Emery doesn’t like how public and overt Jekyll’s being in his affections for Beatrix). When Beatrix writes and says they’ll be staying in Europe even longer, it’s heavily implied that Jekyll is so starved for female companionship that he turns himself into Hyde just so he can go after Ivy. This is more in line with Jekyll’s motivations in the original book, but given that Jekyll in the movie was mostly portrayed as a moral man who was doing this for noble intentions, it feels a little abrupt and out of character (though I will acknowledge that they were probably trying to paint Jekyll as flawed, and just didn’t quite succeed). Furthermore, we don’t really get a montage of Jekyll vs. Hyde; once he has Ivy in his grasp, Jekyll disappears and all we see is Hyde with Ivy, before Jekyll gets news that Beatrix is coming back and he makes up his mind to stop taking the potion. It just feels odd that we don’t get more examples of Hyde’s evilness or contrasts with Jekyll, so the scene where Hyde asserts himself without the potion loses some of its impact. Which in turn impacts the movie as a whole.
All that being said, the way Hyde treats Ivy is actually very effective, making me incredibly uncomfortable and unsettled. He manipulates things to get her fired, then gets her into his cab and makes her into his kept woman. Her rooms are opulent and her clothing is high quality, but she’s obviously afraid of him and feels trapped. While I thankfully have no personal experience with this sort of thing, their relationship is obviously abusive, and Bergman’s terror feels true to life. In that respect, it does make the movie feel more like a horror movie…it’s just not the sort of horror you might have expected.
As this was a remake of the 1931 version, I should probably devote a paragraph to some of the more notable differences between the two. Obviously, the makeup jobs are on opposite sides of the spectrum, and this version wisely does away with the camera tricks. I also like the fact that we get a montage in this version where Jekyll does experiments on animals to test his potion before trying it himself; we might not approve of animal testing, but at least it’s smarter than immediately drinking something you just concocted with no proof it’s going to work. Most surprisingly to me, though, is that this movie feels much more creepy when it comes to Hyde’s treatment of Ivy. The 1931 version was made prior to the Hayes Code fully taking effect, so you’d think it would have been the movie with more sexuality on display. But while Ivy’s introduction is unquestionably more sexual in the ’31 version, Hyde’s abuse of her feels more like it’s simply physical, which is unpleasant but not unsettling. The fact that the ’41 version, made when the Code was in full swing, feels like it’s being much more blatant about what Hyde’s doing to Ivy is kind of shocking to me. Maybe we somehow wound up with the copy from the Mirror Universe, which would be appropriate, all things considered.
I’m on the fence about recommending this movie. There are elements that work (sometimes despite themselves), but other elements aren’t all that entertaining to watch. I suppose the best I can do is suggest you give it a look if you enjoy the Jekyll and Hyde story or Spencer Tracy, but proceed with caution. The same could also be said for a more recent adaptation, although for entirely different reasons…
I was mostly curious about the 1941 version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde because the title role(s) was played by Spencer Tracy, an actor I’ve really come to admire over the years. Seeing him play a hero and a villain in one movie sounded like it had potential. And while his performance was fine, I have to admit that wasn’t what I wound up focusing on most of the time.
The story follows a lot of the same beats as the 1931 version, though there have been some name changes. Dr. Jekyll (Tracy) is convinced that science is capable of removing the evil from people and leaving only the good. Most people he tells this to are skeptical at best and disapproving at worst, including Sir Charles Emery (Donald Crisp), the father of Jekyll’s fiancée Beatrix (Lana Turner). As must happen in this story, Jekyll eventually creates a potion that can accomplish his goal, and he tests it on himself, leading to the birth of his dark alter-ego Mr. Hyde. While Hyde enjoys inciting fights and causing injuries, most of his wickedness is focused on a barmaid named Ivy (Ingrid Bergman), who Jekyll ran into one night and had a bit of an attraction towards. Eventually, Jekyll realizes he needs to stop, and plans to give up the Hyde persona. Naturally, it’s not that simple…
The first thing that really caught my attention about the movie was the visual portrayal of Hyde. I get the impression that a lot of adaptations make Hyde look like a monster, probably for maximum horror/drama. In this version, the crew definitely applied makeup to differentiate Jekyll and Hyde, but it was a lot more subtle than I expected. When Hyde first looks at himself in the mirror, I kept fluctuating between wondering if anything had changed and feeling like Tracy looked like a different person entirely. Eventually I figured out that they’d darkened his hair and made it more wild, made his eyes more sunken and baggy while also having Tracy widen his eyes, and put veneers on his teeth so they had more impact when he bared them in a grin. We later get to see the transformation from Jekyll to Hyde and back so you can watch the process, and while there’s a clear change, it’s nowhere near as large a change as you’d think. I do appreciate the decision not to go overboard, though it does make it harder to believe that nobody could tell who Hyde really was.
The other thing that stood out to me in the movie was the material surrounding Ivy, which was simultaneously good and bad for the movie. The reason it’s bad for the movie is twofold. One, it paints Jekyll in a bad light. Shortly after Jekyll successfully transforms into Hyde for the first time, Emery takes Beatrix to Europe for a long stretch because of Jekyll’s behavior (Hyde actually has nothing to do with this; Emery doesn’t like how public and overt Jekyll’s being in his affections for Beatrix). When Beatrix writes and says they’ll be staying in Europe even longer, it’s heavily implied that Jekyll is so starved for female companionship that he turns himself into Hyde just so he can go after Ivy. This is more in line with Jekyll’s motivations in the original book, but given that Jekyll in the movie was mostly portrayed as a moral man who was doing this for noble intentions, it feels a little abrupt and out of character (though I will acknowledge that they were probably trying to paint Jekyll as flawed, and just didn’t quite succeed). Furthermore, we don’t really get a montage of Jekyll vs. Hyde; once he has Ivy in his grasp, Jekyll disappears and all we see is Hyde with Ivy, before Jekyll gets news that Beatrix is coming back and he makes up his mind to stop taking the potion. It just feels odd that we don’t get more examples of Hyde’s evilness or contrasts with Jekyll, so the scene where Hyde asserts himself without the potion loses some of its impact. Which in turn impacts the movie as a whole.
All that being said, the way Hyde treats Ivy is actually very effective, making me incredibly uncomfortable and unsettled. He manipulates things to get her fired, then gets her into his cab and makes her into his kept woman. Her rooms are opulent and her clothing is high quality, but she’s obviously afraid of him and feels trapped. While I thankfully have no personal experience with this sort of thing, their relationship is obviously abusive, and Bergman’s terror feels true to life. In that respect, it does make the movie feel more like a horror movie…it’s just not the sort of horror you might have expected.
As this was a remake of the 1931 version, I should probably devote a paragraph to some of the more notable differences between the two. Obviously, the makeup jobs are on opposite sides of the spectrum, and this version wisely does away with the camera tricks. I also like the fact that we get a montage in this version where Jekyll does experiments on animals to test his potion before trying it himself; we might not approve of animal testing, but at least it’s smarter than immediately drinking something you just concocted with no proof it’s going to work. Most surprisingly to me, though, is that this movie feels much more creepy when it comes to Hyde’s treatment of Ivy. The 1931 version was made prior to the Hayes Code fully taking effect, so you’d think it would have been the movie with more sexuality on display. But while Ivy’s introduction is unquestionably more sexual in the ’31 version, Hyde’s abuse of her feels more like it’s simply physical, which is unpleasant but not unsettling. The fact that the ’41 version, made when the Code was in full swing, feels like it’s being much more blatant about what Hyde’s doing to Ivy is kind of shocking to me. Maybe we somehow wound up with the copy from the Mirror Universe, which would be appropriate, all things considered.
I’m on the fence about recommending this movie. There are elements that work (sometimes despite themselves), but other elements aren’t all that entertaining to watch. I suppose the best I can do is suggest you give it a look if you enjoy the Jekyll and Hyde story or Spencer Tracy, but proceed with caution. The same could also be said for a more recent adaptation, although for entirely different reasons…