Film

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1941)

Director: Victor Fleming

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Glossy MGM version of Stevenson's horror classic about the good and ambitious doctor whose experiments on himself turn him into a raving homicidal beast. Not a patch on Mamoulian's 1932 version, since it jettisons the overt sexuality (which saw repression as the reason for Jekyll's experiments), and never really allows us to identify with the demonic protagonist, thus forfeiting the opportunity to make the audience complicitous in his guilt. Furthermore, though Bergman (admittedly a little too fresh-faced for a prostitute, even if MGM had allowed such a thing) makes a reasonable barmaid, Turner is badly miscast as the upmarket fiancée. Well shot by Joseph Ruttenberg, and the transformations are effectively handled, but it's generally shallow and anaemic.

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