[Movie Clip]
David Hast: Scott, have you seen Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?
Scott Vander Werf: I have seen that. In fact, mostly I have seen the 1941 version with Spencer Tracy and Ingrid Bergman. But I know that you're asking me about the 1931 version starring Frederick March as the title character.
DH: Yes, with Miriam Hopkins and Rose Hobart directed by Reuben Mamoulian. It is...It's widely regarded, I think, by critics still as being the best movie version of Robert Louis Stevenson's horror novella.
SVW: Which is the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
DH: Oh, right. Yeah. And there's probably been a version with the complete title in it. There have been many, many versions. Even recently, there was a TV series. But even now, many people, even though this is nearly 100 years old, often say this is the best version. I remember the ‘41 version with Spencer Tracy and Ingrid Bergman and I really don't think it's nearly as good as this one.
SVW: And that was the one that when at the time that we were growing up if you were watching monster movies, know on Saturday afternoon or on the weekends or after school showings that that would be the version that you would see.
DH: Yeah, it was the most you know, the bit of course it came in the height of the Golden Age of Hollywood as opposed to in the pre-code era this one and I even read that Louis B. Mayer tried to destroy the prints of the old one. I don't know if this is really, if these stories are true or not, because we heard the exact same thing about Gaslight. Remember we talked about the British version of Gaslight and how supposedly he tried to get all those prints destroyed when the Ingrid Bergman Charles Boyer version came out. Louis B. Mayer was, you know, I wouldn't put it past him. But anyway, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is, you know, one of those great early sound sci-fi, science lab sci-fi like Frankenstein, which was the same year. 1931 was really launched horror movies in the early silent era. 1931 was Frankenstein and Dracula from Universal Studios, which then of course became the horror studio making The Mummy and Wolfman and all that. M the murder movie from German director Fritz Lang was made in Germany before he came to Hollywood and then Paramount came out with this one and to me this is the scariest one of the bunch.
SVW: It really is strikingly powerful in terms of the scare comes from the performance by Frederick March.
DH: the story most people know the story the Dr. Henry Jekyll which in this movie they pronounce Jekyll. Dr. Jekyll.
SVW: And it's the first time I've ever heard that.
DH: Yeah, me too. Who knows what Stevenson, how Stevenson pronounced it. But anyway, the kind and generous Dr. Jekyll, I'm going to say it that way. He believes that in all humans there can be found a good self and a noble self, but also an evil animalistic self. And he believes the two parts can be separated, I guess so you could get rid of the bad part. He's not really specific about it, but he thinks you can separate the two out somehow. And he discovers a chemical that can do this, which of course in the great tradition of sci-fi mad scientists, he drinks himself. What else are going to do? Of course you're going to experiment on yourself. They don't even show him trying it on rats or anything first. He just makes it and drinks it.
SVW: And from the get-go, he has the demeanor of a drug addict who just can't wait to get the next fix.
DH: Yeah, and he is an obsessive character, which we'll get into. you know, there's this... When he takes it, he immediately turns into this other character, the evil side of him, the sadistic, alpha male bully, Mr. Hyde. And then the movie is this kind of Freudian battle between these two sides of human nature. But mostly it's just a good, scary horror film.
SVW: And the...in terms of like what you say in terms of him turning into the sadistic alpha male he becomes totally over the top He has this look it changes his physical look and that's one thing that I’m very interested I have not gone and read about how they did the special effects yet but the transformation are is basically in his facial features
DH: Well, yeah now that you bring it up. I mean you see a number of special effects in this movie that are that are old school and predictable, like using dissolves. The most famous one we all remember if you've seen these old movies is when Lon Chaney Jr. turns from his regular face to the wolf man and you see it as a series of dissolves, right? One shot fading into another, fading into another, they do start of the shot, fade it out, put some makeup on, fade up the next shot, put some makeup on. And there are number of dissolves in this one and by today's standards, they're just like, yeah, whatever fake, right? You suspend disbelief.
SVW: Well, it can't be completely dissolved.
DH: No, but this is what I was getting to. There is one effect in there that’s the first time he does it, when he first drinks it and his face just starts to... like he does things as an actor, he changes his expression, he has this tortured look, but you see these shadows start to appear on his face. His face changes color and everything. And here's how they did it. looked into this: It’s something you could only do in black and white. They used, they put red makeup on his face for where they wanted the shadows to appear. And then they used red and green lights. So remember this is in black and white, but if you shoot with a red light on red, it'll show up. But as they would, at the same rate they faded out the red light, they faded up green light.So we don't see the colors, it's just light. So it's lighting it and it gets exposed in black and white. And if it's an equal amount of light, it basically looks the same except as the green light comes up, the areas of red on his face turn black on black and white film. So it's brilliant.
SVW: Brilliant, and then you couple that with the way that he's manipulating his facial features. And it's very effective.
DH: Yeah, I mean, he's a great actor. Frederick March, you know, he's forgotten now by most people. This is a guy, he won best actor for this movie and he won it in 1946 for the best years of our lives. A wonderful post-World War II drama. He was in the first version of A Star is Born. There have been four total versions of that now and some people still think that one's the best. Yeah, he's a great actor so he's doing that and in some of the older versions of Jekyll and Hyde, like I looked at a little bit of the the John Barrymore silent version from the 1920s. He just does it totally with facial expressions amazingly. And I think in the Spencer Tracy one in 1941, they don't use a lot of makeup and stuff. He does a lot of it with his face. They use some makeup. In this one, they use a lot. They make him look ape-like.
SVW: Well, and see, that's one of the differences in the novella, which I read, which was written in or published in 1886. And in the novella, he actually becomes…he shrinks, he becomes gnarled, but his facial features are such that it takes a while for people to realize something's wrong. And then when they really focus on him, they're like, they see evil. They see a darkness there. But it's not, obviously it's not like this where the teeth change and the hair changes, and he literally becomes the human monster.
DH: Yeah, and it's clear, mean, people are talking about how scary and ugly he looks, right? They're not, I think there been some versions where they have Mr. Hyde be sort of suave, right? Sort of attractive in a scary kind of, in a way that's, you know. But in this one, he's actually really scary. And that works, the deal with him is that he's kind of the...Dr. Hyde, think this is in all the versions, Mr. Hyde is really an evil version of Dr. Jekyll. So we see Dr. Jekyll as this good doctor and everything, but he's pretty full of himself. He thinks he's smarter than other people. He thinks he knows what human beings are made of, and he's entitled to have what he desires. He wants to get married to Muriel Carew, played by Rose Hobart, and her father wants them to wait nine months and he is so impatient to the point of it actually made me a little uncomfortable watching him try to force the general to allow them to get married earlier.
DH: Yeah, because it's all about sex. This movie is not it's not a subtext. It's the text. This movie is about sex. He's like really wants to get married to his wife. And when he can't do that, the unrestrained side of him comes out in Doctor in Mr. Hyde and Mr. Hyde, you know, goes to a nightclub and meets this nightclub entertainer who's also probably a sex worker and starts this so-called relationship with her, but clearly he's just forcing her to be with him.
SVW: Yeah, and that's really where you can see the pre-code elements in this movie. There's things that happen in this movie that would not have happened once the code was put into place. It's almost, there's almost semi-nudity, not just overt sexual material, but also sexual abuse.
DH: Yeah, it's really strong stuff. And like you said, a couple years later, this wouldn't have been allowed in movies and this explicit, wouldn't happen again until the rating system started in the late 60s. And he's just sort of...he's so menacing in this movie. Isn't he the character?
SVW: He is, and the nightclub entertainer sex worker that you're talking about is portrayed by Miriam Hopkins, who's really great in the movie.
DH: Yeah, she was a great, when I say Frederick March isn't well remembered now, definitely Miriam Hopkins is not a name that many people know any longer, but she was a pretty big, we talked about a couple of Ernst Lubitsch films that she was in right after this. She was in Trouble in Paradise and Design for Living, two of the movies that really launched romantic comedies along with It Happened One Night. She famously turned down the role that Claudette Colbert got in It Happened One Night. So she was a big deal actress in the 30s too.
SVW: But yeah, the way that Mr. Hyde is sadistic towards her and her fate in the movie is definitely something that you wouldn't have seen after the code. But for all of it, it's got great production the design of the streets they're dirty they're crowded they're foggy the way that they portrayed Victorian London is is great
DH: Yeah it's very influenced by the like the German expressionist stuff so yeah London does look like this kind of you know dirty crowded Victorian uh... set and then uh... the way that Karl Struss shot at…Struss was an amazing cinematographer uh... who shot uh... movie Sunrise in late silent era by Murnau. It's, you know, the lighting, the innovative special effects we mentioned. There's a great shot when, chase scene near the end, when they run and their shadows are cast on the side of a building as like two stories high. Deep black shadows of people running that like cover the entire building. It's so amazing.
SVW: And that's another element in the movie that's really...shows the talent of Frederick March because yeah, there's actors running but Frederick March almost does acrobatics He's like leaping from once like on stairwells from one floor to another and he's doing things like swinging around. It doesn't look like it's it’s a stunt man It looks like he's doing the stunts.
DH: Yeah, so a reason, you know, here's a few reasons to see this movie, right? It's one of the original great, know, Golden Age of Hollywood horror films, maybe one of the scariest, certainly for its time. It looks great and it's a chance, if you’re a person that thinks about actors more, it's a great chance to see a couple of really great actors from the golden age of Hollywood, Fredric March and Miriam Hopkins.
SVW: And even though it's not the first adaptation of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, it's the one that probably set the standard for all the ones that followed.
DH: Yeah, I would say so.
