The World is yours, my darling, but the moment is mine!
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is directed by Victor Fleming and collectively adapted from the Robert Louis Stevenson story by John Lee Mahin, Percy Heath and Samuel Hoffenstein. It stars Spencer Tracy, Ingrid Bergman and Lana Turner. Music is by Franz Waxman and cinematography by Joseph Ruttenberg.
A remake of the 1931 Rouben Mamoulian/Fredric March version, this follows the same course of action that sees Tracy as the dual title characters. After having developed a potion that will ultimately bring out his evil half – it proves to not be good for anybody really!
It’s the story itself, along with the awesome period setting of a foggy lamplighted Victorian England that stops this from sinking below average – though it does come close in the middle section. It’s just an odd fit, from the daft casting of Tracy and Bergman in the key roles, to the Hollywood Hayes Office compliant smoothness of the material, it becomes almost impossible to take seriously. Then there is a run time of nearly two hours, most of which is to bump up Bergman’s screen time, which while acknowledging her greatness as an actress, it’s just wrong across the board for her here. While alongside her Turner is sadly under written and Tracy’s take on Hyde lacks vim and vigour.
Since a certain Mr. Freud had become in vogue there’s some interesting dream imagery and dissolves sequences, most of which ares bursting with sexual subtext. These moments are superb, but they do not form the backbone of our troubled protagonists, it’s a complete missed opportunity that renders the film as safe and glossy. This is an attempt at horror but without the horror, either visually, thematically or literary, a ripened banana skin of a pic with action missing in action. Yet it is not a desperately bad film, the film making craft on show is top dollar, notably when Ruttenberg is on duty, and it’s a little sensual - though this is kind of tempered by the thought of domestic abuse as a constant threat in our real world.
The 41 version has fans, I’m just not one of them and readily prefer the monstrously potent 31 version. If you haven’t seen it then it’s definitely worth a look, but much of the criticism it has received over the years is in my book very much warranted. 5/10
