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Year: 1932 Production: Paramount Director: Rouben Mamoulian Starring: Fredric March, Miriam Hopkins, Rose Hobart, Holmes Herbert, Edgar Norton, Halliwell Hobbes Screenwriter: Samuel Hoffenstein, Percy Heath Based on The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson 97 minutes; B/W
While Stevenson's suggestion is that civilization may be only skin-deep, his tale of a decent, prim society doctor, Dr Jekyll, who transforms himself with a new drug into the brutal libertine, Mr Hyde, does not exactly abandon the religious concept of original sin; it does, however, reconcile it with 19th-century scientific thought, calling on Darwin (humanity's animal heritage) and prefiguring Freud (the id sometimes overwhelming the ego). Silent film versions (made in 1908, 1910, 1912, 1913 and three in 1920) were usually taken from one of the several melodramatic stage productions rather than directly from the original novel, and tended to present Hyde (as in the 1920 version played by John Barrymore) as a caricature of evil - that is, as a victim of his own Original Sin. In Mamoulian's 1932 version, which remains the most interesting Hyde's appearance is almost that of Neanderthal Man, and his joyfully ferocious behavior results not from inherent evil but from uncontrollable primitive drives. The most compelling of these is sexual - this is one of the classic loci of the theme of sex in sf - though as the film progresses it is accompanied by an increasing capacity for cruelty. All this comments, apparently deliberately, one the repressed society in which Jekyll has been reared. The film, atmospheric and convincing, is an acknowledged classic, especially famous for the heartbeats on the soundtrack and the convincing transformation scenes. When re-released after the Hollywood Production Code was established in 1934, it had 10 minutes cut (sexual censorship), seldom restored since. |
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