Technical tricks abound, but they complement rather than overshadow the story. Mamoulian pulls out all the stops, stoking our senses with innovative and exciting visuals that lend the film a surprisingly contemporary feel. Such frankness makes Jekyll's internal struggles more visceral and stark, and Mamoulian amplifies them with plenty of bold cinematic brushstrokes that add style to the story's substance. Jekyll's desires are surprisingly overt, blatant sexual imagery is everywhere, and there's no attempt to paint Ivy as anything other than a prostitute. The fact that this version also was produced before the adoption of the Motion Picture Production Code works to its benefit by giving Mamoulian the freedom to generously sprinkle titillating and downright explicit elements throughout his film. Other film versions, including the 1941 remake, tone down the depiction of Hyde so he can better assimilate into society, but the stark difference between the two here amplifies Hyde's evil and increases the fright quotient. Mamoulian takes a leaf from Stevenson's novella by depicting Hyde as a Neanderthal, a sub-human species unbound by the constraints of stringent Victorian moralism who becomes ever more grotesque as his soul decays and insatiable appetite for animalistic acts increases. Hyde gives us a monster more unnerving and realistic than any Hollywood previously created because its seeds lie in all of us. Mounted hot on the heels of such blockbuster chillers as Dracula and Frankenstein during the early 1930s horror craze, Dr. It's a tragic, deeply affecting tale filled with angst, guilt, regret, and self-loathing that also challenges us to look inward at our own twisted souls and reflect on how we manage the demons that prey upon us. Hyde runs rampant, wreaking havoc on Ivy Pearson (Miriam Hopkins), the prostitute who stokes his passions and drives him to commit numerous acts of sadistic violence against her. ![]() Once Jekyll can no longer control or contain the beast lurking within him, Mr. Hyde, who previously manifested himself only when Jekyll drank the transformative potion, comes out on his own. Indulging his desires only makes him crave them all the more, until his alter ego Mr. What heights it might scale! And the so-called evil, once liberated, would fulfill itself and trouble us no more." "If these two selves could be separated from each other," he opines, "how much freer the good in us would be. Jekyll, who's desperate to marry his fiancée Muriel (Rose Hobart) and consummate their relationship but is continually put off by her priggish, domineering father (Halliwell Hobbes), believes isolating good and evil and allowing man to satisfy his shameful yearnings will help him ultimately become a better person. Henry Jekyll (pronounced "Gee-kill" here) ingests an experimental homemade elixir designed to separate his benevolent and nefarious impulses. Much like the 1941 remake, the 1931 version chronicles the serious consequences that ensue when the upstanding, noble Dr. ![]() Hyde deftly uses science as a springboard for exploring the human psyche's murky recesses. Hyde remains a vital, engrossing, and terrifying film that brims with artistry, innovation, thrills, and emotion.Ī disquieting portrait of schizophrenia, sexual repression, and the age-old tug-of-war between good and evil, Dr. Though produced more than 90 years ago at the dawn of the sound era, the 1931 edition of Dr. And it's even tougher to imagine any actor embodying the tortured title characters better than Fredric March, who won a well-deserved Best Actor Oscar for his mesmerizing portrayal of two polar-opposite men trapped in the same body. ![]() I haven't seen them all, but it's tough to imagine any version eclipsing director Rouben Mamoulian's dazzling interpretation of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic novella. Hyde dating all the way back to a 16-minute 1908 short. Hollywood has mounted several adaptations of Dr.
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