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Jun. 8th, 2011 10:21 pmMovie night at Bainbridge. This month was the 1931 Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (which I could have sworn was from 1932).
Despite my crazy love for 30's horror films and my crazy love for Jekyll and Hyde, I had never actually seen all of this film before. Which is a shame, because it is pretty awesome. The makeup effects through the colored filters are pretty awesome and I love the weird camera tricks. The split screening is a little hokey, sure, but it's often quite effective. And while I don't quite like the POV camera during the opening, I love it during Jekyll's first scene with Ivy - plonks us right into his head, makes us gaze right along with him. I wish Mr March's Hyde was a little less cartoonish, especially at the beginning, but then I've never been a big fan of an exaggeratedly ugly Mr Hyde. Still, once one gets past that, he's quite effectively horrible. His scenes with Ivy are genuinely difficult to watch - you can really tell that this film was pre-Code.
I find this Jekyll appealing as a person, but I don't quite like the interpretation of the character. I kinda feel like Dr Jekyll needs to have a fairly repressed personality to make Hyde's outbursts of violence and lust make sense. This Jekyll isn't terribly repressed - he has a healthy sexuality that he doesn't see anything wrong with, when he's angry he yells at people, etc. The only repression he seems to feel is from outside sources - his future father-in-law forcing him to put off marrying his fiancee. (So, really, the message of the film is basically "Don't listen to your parents - have premarital sex.") Jekyll needs to be more obvious suppressing his violent and lustful urges, needs to be more obviously the hypocrite Hyde describes: "likes your legs but talks about your garters."* Still, he's pretty and he has nice romantic banter and he breaks down appealingly. So there's that.
And man, I haven't read the book in forever - I'd completely forgotten the existence of Dr Lanyon. This version keeps a lot of the Dr Lanyon bits from the book while discarding Mr Utterson entirely. I don't particularly care about either of them one way or the other, but it's always interesting to see who gets cut and who gets left in.
Maybe I should put the musical back on my mp3 player for tomorrow...
*I like the fact that Hyde, at least in this film, is so incredibly honest. He wears no masks, tells you upfront what he is, and hates people who do hide themselves. He'll beat you to death but he'll never tell you a lie. It's interesting.
Despite my crazy love for 30's horror films and my crazy love for Jekyll and Hyde, I had never actually seen all of this film before. Which is a shame, because it is pretty awesome. The makeup effects through the colored filters are pretty awesome and I love the weird camera tricks. The split screening is a little hokey, sure, but it's often quite effective. And while I don't quite like the POV camera during the opening, I love it during Jekyll's first scene with Ivy - plonks us right into his head, makes us gaze right along with him. I wish Mr March's Hyde was a little less cartoonish, especially at the beginning, but then I've never been a big fan of an exaggeratedly ugly Mr Hyde. Still, once one gets past that, he's quite effectively horrible. His scenes with Ivy are genuinely difficult to watch - you can really tell that this film was pre-Code.
I find this Jekyll appealing as a person, but I don't quite like the interpretation of the character. I kinda feel like Dr Jekyll needs to have a fairly repressed personality to make Hyde's outbursts of violence and lust make sense. This Jekyll isn't terribly repressed - he has a healthy sexuality that he doesn't see anything wrong with, when he's angry he yells at people, etc. The only repression he seems to feel is from outside sources - his future father-in-law forcing him to put off marrying his fiancee. (So, really, the message of the film is basically "Don't listen to your parents - have premarital sex.") Jekyll needs to be more obvious suppressing his violent and lustful urges, needs to be more obviously the hypocrite Hyde describes: "likes your legs but talks about your garters."* Still, he's pretty and he has nice romantic banter and he breaks down appealingly. So there's that.
And man, I haven't read the book in forever - I'd completely forgotten the existence of Dr Lanyon. This version keeps a lot of the Dr Lanyon bits from the book while discarding Mr Utterson entirely. I don't particularly care about either of them one way or the other, but it's always interesting to see who gets cut and who gets left in.
Maybe I should put the musical back on my mp3 player for tomorrow...
*I like the fact that Hyde, at least in this film, is so incredibly honest. He wears no masks, tells you upfront what he is, and hates people who do hide themselves. He'll beat you to death but he'll never tell you a lie. It's interesting.
