Search - Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on DVD

Silent Horror Classic Adaptation

Mr. Robinson | 10/09/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"By the year 1920, there'd already been several different film versions of the classic Robert Louis Stevenson novella centered around duality. However, John Barrymore's take, directed by John S. Robertson, would become the best known silent adaptation of the tale. This was the one that put several plot devices on the map. For instance, it introduced the good girl, bad girl dichotomy that mirror Jekyll and Hyde's sense of desire for the pure and profane. It wasn't taken too far in this version but become more developed in the definitive 1931 Rouben Mammoulien version starring Fredric March. One element it did add which did not remain was a sort of Dorian Grey touch involving Jekyll's fiancee's father.

Dr. Henry Jekyll, as opposed to the fifty year old private chemist portrayed in Stevenson's original, is here reimagined as a young and idealistic philanthropist who works late hours tending to the sick in his ward. His fiancee's father, Sir George Carewe, a more worldly man, tempts him by taking him to an "not respectable" bar where eyeing the women, especially a dancer played by Nita Naldi. He is inspired by the proposition of freeing man's baser nature from his more pure one. And, with that, he concocts a very potion that unleashes Edward Hyde, here seen as a spidery and disgusting manifestation of Jekyll's lower instincts.

Hyde now indulges in all the pleasures he could not as Jekyll. However, the path of illicit pleasures soon leads to destruction as Hyde ruins the lives of whomever he comes into contact with, and eventually commits murder. Even so, Jekyll also loses control when the transformations become involuntary, and he goes to sleep as the doctor but awakens as Hyde.

Many of the adaptations depict Hyde's growing evil in various ways. Here, its particularly interesting as Hyde's evil is represented in two, but comprehensive aspects. For instance, Hyde is pictured, as previously mentioned, like a spider, with pointed albino head, and elongated fingers; literally "creeping up" on his victims. The effects of his evil are metaphorically portrayed as disease-like; contagious and infecting all of his victims. This is made more clear on the DVD essay accompanying the movie which says the film was making subtle comparisons of Hyde's evil power with syphilis, which had been a horrible disease famous in the latter part of the 19th century, and still very much so at the time the film was released. Hyde's victims appear pale and weak with dark circles under their eyes much like those infected with syphillis. Hyde even goes so far to compare one fresh faced girl of the night he plans for his own amusement, to another he's already made use of and left behind who is now worn and sickly. Jekyll himself begins displaying signs of the sickness with dark circles under his eyes. Therefore, Hyde is a spider-like ogre carrying disease and vampirically draining the life force from his victims, including Jekyll (in a famous dream montage, Hyde is pictured as a giant spider crawling on top of Jekyll and sucking the life out of him; this causes Jekyll to change to Hyde).

This is but one theme of the film, though. There is enough of the classic story for everyone to recognize. Disease metaphors aside, Hyde goes onto become quite a brutal killer. He beats one victim pretty severely with a walking stick, and stomps over a young child, both clearly echoing Hyde's brutality in the novel.

John Barrymore, though pretty over the top by today's standards, gives a bravura performance as Jekyll/Hyde, even going so far as to portray much of the first half of the transformation with no make-up. More would indeed be added later on. He would use the Hyde make-up later on in life for practical joke purposes for which he was legendary. The rest of the supporting cast is quite good, especially the fiancee's father, Sir George Carewe, played by Brandon Hurst who helps lead Jekyll down his dark "Dorian Gray" like road. And, more would be made of the good girl/bad girl staple in later films, but it clearly marks a turn in adding a sexual motivation for, and component of, Hyde's evil. The film was one of the first horror movies, and is a classic staple of the 1920's silent pictures.
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