Rent Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)

Definitive Version. - Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde review by Steve

This 1931 version of RL Stevenson's classic novel is definitive for three main reasons; the amazing, innovative transformation of Jekyll into Hyde; its fabulously salacious pre-code content; and for the astonishing camera movement and POV tracking shots. That Rouben Mamoulian manages such fluidity in the era of camera booths is a miracle.

Credit for the above should be extended to cinematographer Karl Struss. They create incredible close ups and impressionistic images that mirror the hero's duality. There is also a wonderfully atmospheric pictorial of Victorian London, all candle and lamplit shadows and cobbled streets in the rain.

Fredric March deservedly won an Oscar for his split performance, but Miriam Hopkins steals the film as the Cockney sex worker living in terror of Hyde's brutality. Stevenson wrote a story about the ego versus the id, but it was Paramount that added the sexual motifs that still feel transgressive. It is a fetishistic film. The Hays office cut a lot of this for its reissue.

It presents a paradox: that Victorian sexual prohibition drove men to the services of prostitutes; but without these restrictions, man's animalistic nature is capable of terrible depravity. Eventually we see Jekyll as Hyde's mask, sanctimoniously obscuring his real nature and using it to mediate with a hypocritical society. It is one of the most brilliant films of precode Hollywood.

The Day of the Jekyll - Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde review by CH

It was fitting to watch this after The Most Dangerous Game (1932) for it was made at the same time, and both films concern a mind whose two sections are split between characters. The Jekyll and Hyde instance is well known, and exists in its own right as a novella. This first sound version brings to the story a distinction different that of prose itself. Here, we see one team's view of the London setting (made in Hollywood) and the way in which the characters look - in particular the transformation of one eponymous character into the other. This is a marvel of early cinematic technique, and the film as a whole makes remarkable use of close up, light and shadow, and has one of the most provocative displays of a female leg - made all the more so by the sheet from which it protrudes.

All this well nigh amounts to noir long before before noir took its mid-Forties shape. Not that technique swamps the story. That is the familiar one of mystery and pursuit, which springs its own surprise in Stevenson's telling. If a film cannot match that particular technique, here is so much to savour that nobody should miss this version which has been restored to its original length.

A treat after dark.