Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (film, 1931)

See also: the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde is an American film carried out in 1931 by Rouben Mamoulian (1897 - 1987), and produced by Adolph Zukor for the Paramount. This first adaptation for the talking films about the famous novel of Robert Louis Stevenson, to strong the Connotation S erotic, contributes to durably fix the Hollywood image of the myth of the honourable doctor gradually submerged by his double at the unverifiable impulses. It is also the occasion for its realizer to devote itself to daring formal experiments and it makes it possible its main actor to gain the price of interpretation to the Academy Awards of 1932.

Summary

London, end of the XIXe century. Henry Jekyll is a young person, shining and charismatic doctor whose theories iconoclasts fascinate its students, even if his older fellow-members (the first of which his/her friend Doctor Lanyon) deplore his eccentricities. Thus it creates sensation the day when it announces, during a conference at the university, which it discovered the means of separating one from the other the two antagonistic tendencies present in any human being: that which attract it towards the noblest aspirations and highest, and that which pushes it to satisfy the lowest impulses and most terrestrial.

Jekyll does not remain about it less one man unanimously respected for his devotion towards the poor ones and tenderly liked by its been engaged, Muriel. But the father of this one, the Carew general, sees of an evil eye the eagerness of Jekyll to marry his daughter, impatience which he judges inconvenante.
One evening that it leaves in his future father-in-law accompanied by Doctor Lanyon, Jekyll carries secour to a prostitute who is attacked in full street. It accompanies back the young woman, Ivy, at her, and examines it. It is offered then to him, but the convenient irruption of Lanyon in the apartment prevents Jekyll from succumbing to temptation. The vision of the leg stripped of Ivy, during nonchalamment out of the bed, continues nevertheless Jekyll whereas it returns at his place.

The Carew general goes on a journey to Bath, accompanied by his daughter. Exasperated with the idea to be separate of its been engaged for one month, Jekyll decides to try out on itself the potion of its invention, which must enable him to be released from its impatient desires. It is transformed then into a creature with the vaguely simiesque aspect, which it baptizes Hyde. It is under this appearance that it finds Ivy, of which it manages to make its mistress thanks to the money that it offers to him and with terror that it inspires to him. Hyde shows a sadistic lover, who enjoys to beat and humiliate the young woman.

The return of Muriel seems to mark the end of the martyrdom of Ivy: Jekyll indeed decided to be transformed more into Hyde, and it succeeds in obtaining from the Carew general whom it advances the date fixed for his marriage. Unfortunately, whereas it rests in a park, Jekyll is transformed suddenly into Hyde, without to have taken potion. This last goes to Ivy, with which it acknowledges its secrecy, before strangling the young woman.

It does not remain then any more in Jekyll, become a murderer, and who does not control any more his transformations, that with going to bid its farewell with Muriel, which it is not any more question of marrying. But after this interview, Jekyll is transformed again into Hyde, and pénêtre again at Carew, where it tries to misuse Muriel. Put in escape by the father of this one and their servant, Hyde takes refuge in the laboratory of Doctor Jekyll. Attacked by the police force, denounced by Lanyon to which it had had to entrust its secrecy, Hyde is cut down whereas it tries to flee.

Elements of analysis

Formal innovations

Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde is the third film of the scenario writer Rouben Mamoulian, who had first of all made known himself with Broadway as director of theater before being established with Hollywood where he affirms himself like one of the most innovative realizers of his generation in the field of cinematographic esthetics: thus in 1929, against the will of the studios, it imposed the movements of camera in its first film, Applause .

With Doctor Jekyll and Mister hyde , Mamoulian continues its formal expémimentations, by inaugurating in particular the subjective Travelling . Thus in the first minutes of film, the scene is seen through the glance of Doctor Jekyll, which one discovers the face at the time when it passes in front of a mirror (the spectator will discover Hyde in the same way.) The metamorphosis of Jekyll in Hyde is also for Mamoulian the occasion to try out effect visual and sound news.

Mamoulian considered however that, “with the cinema as in painting and sculpture, art must exceed esthetics”, estimating that “what occurs to the screen must be controlled by a dramatic point of view rather than by pure esthetics. ” It is however precisely the dramatic lack of motivation of its esthetic research which will be reproached Rouben Mamoulian later: “there always was a side Concours Lépine, exposure to the Living room of the inventors at Mamoulian”, thus write the critic Jean-Pierre Coursodon and the scenario writer Bertrand Tavernier in their dedicated work with the American cinema, in which they reproach to the realizer Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde for integrating in his film of the lucky finds (its beginning out of subjective camera, the screen cut into two diagonally on several occasions) which “do not bring anything to the account. ”

The contribution and the report/ratio with the myth

This adaptation of the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and of Mr. Hyde , if it is the first to be realized for the talking films, is far from constituting the first attempt to put in images the famous novel of Robert Louis Stevenson: about fifteen films, of which several in parodic matter have éjà turned before Rouben Mamoulian does not propose its vision of the tragedy history of Doctor Jekyll and his double. Most famous of them, whose producer was already Adolph Zukor, is the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of John S. Robertson (1920), with John Barrymore in the title role.

But it is well the vision which Mamoulian of the double personality of the London doctor and the mobiles gives which animate it which “most durably fixed the representation of the myth” designed one half-century before by the author of the Island at the treasure and of the Maître of Ballantrae .

The figure of Hyde

Hyde of film of Robertson was “uneven deformed, between the devil and Quasimodo. ” Mamoulian, as for him, prefers to give him the features of the Homme of Néandertal, which causes to give an interpretation significantly different from nature of the double from Doctor Jekyll: this one does not represent any more the aspect malefic which would be present in any man, but the share of animality which it carries in him, animality which appears prégnante more and more as the film advances, so much so that it is a true monkey which faces the police officers in the last scene of the film.
Paradoxically, Mamoulian will explain why he had not wanted to describe being bestialisant Hyde but on the contrary, to a certain extent at least, humanizing itself: Hyde changes innocent animal gradually, I will not say in vicious animal because the animals are not it, but in vicious human monster, a monster which belongs to us but that we usually control. One could very see also in Hyde de Mamoulian the transposition of a racist stereotype current “at one time when lynchings daily, and are caused for half of them by alleged rapes of white women. ” In this context, explains the specialist in Hollywood Francis Bordat, it is difficult that the appearance of Hyde does not return to features négroïdes. Consciously or not, the film exploits the obsession of the crossings of races and the aggression of the white woman by the lustful negro, well established already in imaginary cinematographic American since the Naissance of a nation , of David Wark Griffith (1915). At all events, to interpret the role of Hyde can only be one aubaine for an actor, will entrust Mamoulian later. Indeed, Hyde is easier to play than Jekyll. when a interprête can unchain its passions, it is increasingly easier One cannot badly play insane because the madness does not have logic, and all that one does in a scene of madness is good. This is why, still Mamoulian said, “one should never give price to an actor or an actress for a role of insane. ” The jury of Academy Awards was not to share this point of view, and allotted in 1932 a Oscar to Fredric March for his double interpretation of Jekyll/Hyde.

Sexuality and its repression

Jorge Luis Borges pointed out that the realizers who adapt the Strange case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde for the cinema always make the error to make of Hyde a sensual character, whereas Stevenson insists only on its cruauté.
Such is well indeed the register on which the film of Mamoulian is located: Hyde, but also Jekyll, is sensual characters and the second releases himself from the first only because he is frustrated in the satisfaction of his sexual desires.

“ I don' T want to wait any to skirt , entrusts Jekyll to Muriel Carew, its been engaged, I want you to marry me now . ” But the father of this one is intractable, and the impatience of his/her future son-in-law seems to him being indecent: “ It isn' T gives ”, “that is not done”, explains it.
It seems that with each time Jekyll holds a woman in her arms, that it is of its been engaged or an young woman met randomly of a street, the social propriety expresses its castratrice presence through the figure of the one of its representatives (Doctor Lanyon, or the Carew general via its servant): “It is notable that two scenes the garden with Muriel or in the room with Ivy are concluded in the same way, in form of coïtus interruptus ”, comments on Francis Bordat. “All first half of film underlines this social repression of the desire, on which the character of the Carew general confers a caricatural turn. ”

According to Mamoulian, therefore “the original inspiration of Jekyll is noble. It starts by rebelling justifiably against narrow conventions of the period victorienne, in particular against sexual morals. ” And it would be to remain faithful to its desire for Muriel in spite of the obstacles which puts the Carew general at his satisfaction that it “with the idea that if he can separate the animal side from his nature, he will become entirely spiritual and good. ”

This sexualized second reading of the romantic myth finds its expression the most completed in the scene of the meeting between Jekyll and Ivy, scene which “strikes by the boldness of its erotism. ” And still, explains Mamoulian, this scene was crossed to the assembly of the original version: “the beginning and the end are there, but what misses, it is its progressive stripping under the cover. ”

Data sheet

Distribution

See too

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