Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931 film)
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| Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde | |
|---|---|
 Film poster |
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| Directed by | Rouben Mamoulian |
| Produced by | Rouben Mamoulian |
| Written by | Robert Louis Stevenson (novel) Samuel Hoffenstein Percy Heath |
| Starring | Fredric March Miriam Hopkins Rose Hobart Holmes Herbert Halliwell Hobbes Edgar Norton |
| Music by | Herman Hand |
| Cinematography | Karl Struss |
| Editing by | William Shea |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
| Release date(s) | December 31, 1931 |
| Running time | 98 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $1,140,000 |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a 1931 horror film directed by Rouben Mamoulian. It is an adaptation of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the Robert Louis Stevenson story of a man who takes a potion which turns him from a mild-mannered man of science into a crude homicidal maniac. The film, made prior to the full enforcement of the Hays code, is remembered today for its strong sexual content, embodied mostly in the character of the prostitute, Ivy, played by Miriam Hopkins. The overt sexuality was toned down for the next film version of the story in 1941. The secret of the astonishing transformation scenes wasn't revealed until decades later (Mamoulian himself revealed it in a volume of interviews with Hollywood directors published under the title The Celluloid Muse). A series of rotating filters matching the make-up was used on the lenses, enabling the make-up to be gradually exposed or made invisible, depending upon the scene.
When MGM remade the film in 1941, the studio acquired the rights to Paramount's 1931 version. MGM subsequently condemned the earlier version to obscurity - indeed for many years the Fredric March version was thought to be 'lost'. In 1967 a print surfaced and was shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York: the film had been extensively cut. In 1975 a frame-by frame book version of the film was published with the stated aim of inspiring film historians to search for missing portions of the film: by 1989 the film had been restored and is broadly intact. However, there are stills of Mr. Hyde which do not appear in current film prints (such as Hyde trampling over a toddler) which suggest there is still missing footage. Today, the rights to the 1931 film rest with Warner Bros., through Turner Entertainment, who acquired the film in 1986 as part of an attempt to acquire MGM.
Because the film had been lost for so long, film history books tended to exaggerate the film's celebrated transformation scenes. Often it has been implied that Fredric March transforms into Hyde in one take, with the entire make-up appearing. The truth is that March was already wearing some of the make-up, but because of the use of red and blue filters, it was invisible. When the circular filters were gradually rotated from red to blue, we saw March as Hyde, and the tranformation is remarkable. Hyde looks almost nothing like Fredric March, and it is difficult to tell that he is actually playing the role. So what happens is that the viewer sees Fredric March's features change quickly seemingly without camera tricks. Indeed in the subsequent transformations, crude lap dissolves are used to show Jekyll's change. There is speculation that the final transformation was not shot with Fredric March as Jekyll does not seem to resemble the actor but this is apparently untrue.
Wally Westmore's make-up for Hyde, simian and hairy with tusks influenced greatly the popular image of Hyde in media and comic books (the American Classics Illustrated edition of Jekyll and Hyde clearly based its design of Hyde on the Fredric March movie, although it is more toned down); in part this reflected the novella's implication of Hyde as embodying repressed evil and hence being semi-evolved or simian in appearance.
Fredric March's performance has varied in the eyes of critics from pioneering to exaggerated: an impatient Jekyll and excessively animalistic Hyde. In one respect Spencer Tracy's comparatively maligned 1941 performance - with minimal Hyde make-up - looks less dated and is arguably subtler, perhaps less unsettling to modern audiences than Fredric March's more intense theatrics (Tracy actually wanted to use no makeup whatsoever). Such criticism must be put in the context of 1930s style acting which was heavily influenced by theatre. Overall the 1931 movie is still the most enjoyable and surreal version of Stevenson's tale, at least since John Barrymore's classic and unmatchably theatrical 1920 silent version. When Tracy did the remake he suffered an embarrassing firestorm from critics stating that his Hyde was inferior to March's, and March sent him a friendly telegram saying that Tracy's performance was the best thing ever to happen to March's career.
[edit] Awards
It won the Academy Award for Best Actor (Fredric March). Although March had beaten Wallace Beery by one vote, Louis B Mayer (head of MGM which made The Champ) used his influence to ensure Beery got an Oscar too. Later on the Academy Awards changed the rules so that two oscars could only be awarded where there was an absolute tie in the voting. It was nominated for Best Cinematography and Best Writing, Adaptation. It also won the Audience Referendum award for Most Favorite Actor (Fredric March) at the Venice Film Festival.
[edit] Trivia
This film is one of several films originally released by Paramount Pictures that are now owned by Warner Bros., other such films include Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and the 1981 remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice -- incidentally, WB owns through Turner the 1946 MGM version as well.
