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Bookmark this pageDr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1931)
Director: Rouben Mamoulian
Movie review
From Time Out London
A subversive and psychologically rigorous take on RL Stevenson’s tale of severed souls, ‘Dr Jekyll’ combines gothic horror, aristocratic romance and madcap Freudian psychodrama into a dizzying, exhilirating brew.Fredric March’s Jekyll exists in a state of unhappy Victorian reppression, unable to lay a finger on his bride-to-be until their wedding night and sorely tempted by Miriam Hopkins’ buxom harlot Champagne Ivy. Drinking his serum allows him to throw off the shackles of polite society, to get in touch with the unrestrained, wilfully brutish animal within.
But Mamoulian’s 1931 film is no voyeuristic fantasy: through a strikingly modern combination of subjective camerawork (by Karl Struss) and still-astounding visual effects, he makes it clear that Jekyll is no fiction: he is all of us, all the time. When, in the final scene, a police sergeant turns to the audience with an accusatory finger and a cry of ‘that’s the man!’, it’ll be a stalwart soul who doesn’t flinch back in his cinema seat.
Author: Tom Huddleston
Time Out London Issue 1999, Dec 11 - 17, 2008
Cast & crew
Director: Rouben Mamoulian
Producer: Rouben Mamoulian
Cast: Fredric March, Miriam Hopkins, Rose Hobart, Holmes Herbert, Halliwell Hobbes, Edgar Norton full cast
Rated: 12A
Duration: 98 mins
UK Release: Dec 12 2008
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