Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1931)

Directed by: Rouben Mamoulian

Starring: Fredric March
             Miriam Hopkins

             Rose Hobart

Run time: 98 mins

Studio: Paramount

Black & White

Rouben Mamoulian’s Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde is regarded by many as the best movie version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic tale, and it’s not hard to see why. Quite apart from its lavish production values, its attention to detail, its magnificent central performance (which earned Fredric March a well-deserved Academy Award - a rare distinction for a horror film) and its famous special effects, the film benefits enormously from having been made before the full enforcement of the censorious Motion Picture Production Code (popularly known as the Hays Code, after Hollywood’s chief censor Will H. Hays), allowing Mamoulian to explore his subject matter with considerably more frankness and honesty than he might have been able to had the film been made a few years later. Basically, anyone who’s ever suspected that Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is really the story of one man’s repressed sexuality erupting to the surface need look no further than Mamoulian’s film for confirmation of their suspicions.

That the film is to be an exploration of one man's psyche is established from the outset, with Mamoulian using subjective camera lensing in the opening scene to place the audience directly inside Jekyll’s head. The man we encounter there is a cultured and seemingly untroubled individual, used to the luxuries of life and happy to spend his time reciting Bach amid the opulent surroundings of his London home (and gently rebuking his manservant Poole (Edgar Norton) for failing to be moved by the music) rather than attending the local doctors’ symposium, where he is due to give a lecture that evening. Jekyll’s lectures, we are told, are popular and always sensational. He is quite the celebrity and clearly one of the leading intellectuals of his day; but Mamoulian’s use of the subjective camera alerts us to the fact that with this success has come an unhealthy degree of self-absorption, possibly bordering on narcissism, a point that is underscored by the fact that our first sight of Jekyll (while we are still viewing the world through is eyes) is his reflection in a hall mirror as he is preparing to leave the house.

Jekyll, we quickly learn, sees himself as a visionary who recognises no limits to scientific enquiry, unlike his learned colleagues.  During his lecture at the symposium he chides them for allowing the London fog to penetrate their minds and cloud their reason. He informs them that he has analysed the human soul and has come to believe that man is not truly one. Part of man strives for nobility (the good side) while the bad side seeks an expression of impulses that ‘bind him to some dim animal relation’ of the earth. The two sides are chained together but carry out a struggle – repression to the evil, remorse to the good. Jekyll believes that if he splits the two sides then the good will reach greater heights and the bad will be able to fulfil itself and leave us alone. To this end, he has begun experimenting with certain chemicals.

Dracula (1931)

Directed by: Tod Browning
Starring:   Bela Lugosi

               Helen Chandler              

               David Manners

               Dwight Fry

               Edward Van Sloan

Running time: 75 mins

Studio: Universal
Black & White

Dracula is a frustrating film to watch. It is undoubtedly of historical importance (in the year 2000 it was selected for inclusion in the USA's National Film Registry), it made a star of its leading man, Bela Lugosi, and its huge box-office success helped usher in the Golden Age of Hollywood horror. Unfortunately, however, I don't think it's terribly good. "Blasphemy!" I hear you cry? Well, maybe - but as a film by Tod Browning, who was still one of the leading Hollywood directors of his day, Dracula is a long way from representing his best work. Indeed, some sources suggest that Browning had very little interest in the material and left much of the shoot up to his cinematographer, Karl Freund. There are several reasons why this might have been the case. For a start, Dracula was originally envisaged by Universal as a major spectacle along the lines of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera, but the Great Depression put paid to that idea. Also, the screenplay was based not on the original novel but on the heavily abridged stage version that had been running very successfully on Broadway, giving Browning no opportunity to reimagine the material for himself. Finally, and probably most importantly, the original plan had been to cast Browning's long-time friend and collaborator Lon Chaney in the lead role, but Chaney died in 1930 after contracting lung cancer and suffering a throat haemorrhage. Apparently, Lugosi only got the part (which he had played in the Broadway production) because he effectively pestered the studio to give it to him and agreed to a substantial cut in his salary. All in all, it was a very inauspicious start.

Dracula is very much a film of two halves: the first twenty minutes, and the rest of the film. It begins promisingly: A carriage rattles along through a lonely Transylvanian mountain pass – on board a group of travellers including English solicitor, Renfield (Dwight Frye) are thrown from side to side while one of their number reads aloud from a guide book warning of the many evils abroad in this remote part of the world. Arriving at one of those Transylvanian villages that were to become a staple of horror movies for decades to come, the travellers alight; but Mr Renfield is travelling on to Borgo Pass to meet another carriage at midnight. The news invokes terror among the peasants. Where is he going? To Castle Dracula, he informs them. But he cannot! Dracula and his wives live there and they are shape-shifting, coffin-dwelling bloodsuckers! He must stay, especially now that the sun is setting. Renfield protests –he has no choice: it’s a matter of business and he is obliged to go. The peasants hurry away inside, but not before one of them has given Renfield a crucifix for his protection. Puzzled but not especially concerned by the peasants’ warnings, Renfield boards the coach again and disappears off into the sunset.