Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941)

 Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde (1941)

In classic horror literature there are three horror stories that have made the greatest impact, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 classic The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was adapted as a stage performance in 1887 by Russell Sullivan, and then for film in 1925, and again in 1931.   The Paramount Pictures 1931 adaptation was an Academy Award winning version of the story.  Then in 1941 MGM decided to remake the 1931 version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, also pulling elements for the screenplay from the stage performance, and thus being less based on Robert Louis Stevenson's novella than upon the 1931 film and the 1887 stage performance.  For the 1941 film MGM cast two A-list actors to play the lead roles with Spencer Tracy and Ingrid Bergman.   

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was directed by Victor Fleming (the director of Gone With The Wind) with a screenplay by John Lee Manin, Percy Heath, and Samuel Hoffenstein.   The film was produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and distributed by Loew's Inc.   The film opened to positive critical reception and was nominated for multiple Oscars at the 14th Academy Awards presentation, though it didn't win either of the nominations.  The film was met with a more mixed reception by viewers and newspaper critics, some calling the film passe and disappointing.  In the box office the film made a reported $2,351,000 with a budget of $1,140,000.

Most horror films, even the classics like the Universal Monster films, are B-movies, with b-list actors, however with the 1941 remake of the 1931 classic Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde MGM cast two huge A-List actors for the film, and made a big budget production of a horror film.   Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde stars Spencer Tracy as Dr. Jekyll/Mr Hyde, Lana Turner plays his fiance Beatrix Emery, Donald Crisp plays her father Sr Charles Emery, Ingrid Bergman plays as the "bad girl" as Ivy Pearson, Ian Hunter plays Dr. Jekyll's friend John Lanyon, and Peter Godfrey plays Dr. Jekyll's butler Poole.  The film has a great cast, and all of the actors play their roles wonderfully, though the one who really excelled was Ingrid Bergman as Ivy, usually Bergman is cast in more wholesome "good girl" roles, and for this film she was originally cast for the role of Beatrix and Lana Turner was cast as Ivy.  However for fear that she would be only type-casted for those kinds of roles, and wanting to show that she has a bigger range of acting abilities, she requested that the casting of the two girls be switched, which was an amazing choice, for she excelled at the role, and proved that she was a capable and skilled actress that could go beyond the roles that she had previously been cast as.   I think really in the film that she was the best of the cast.  Tracy's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was effective and terrifying, not so much in a horror-monster way, but more so in a terrifying domestic abuser sort of way.  

I think the shortcomings of this film are not with the actors, but more so with the writing itself, the book I feel had more horror and suspense in it, where this film takes its time very slowly building up to the climax, dare I say at times the film becomes kind of boring.   I will not take away from it being a great film, but it feels like it focuses more on the strange love triangle that the film creates, rather than on being a monster film about a man who turns into a monster when he drinks a potion, and commits vile crimes of murder.   In this film it doesn't start with the murder, and then use storytelling devices to shed the light on the horrible reality behind the murders as the book does.  Instead this film starts off before any crime is committed, and the transition from man to monster is subdued and he is hardly a monster in the traditional sense, and is more of a monster as just being a terrible abusive person.  I feel like Spencer Tracy does his best with what he is given in playing the role, but I feel like the problem is that the story is just kind of weakly written, and fails to deliver horror or suspense, and we instead grow to despise both Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde, because they aren't actually two different people like in the classic story, but in this film Dr. Jekyll seems to just well hide the evil he has inside, and even in his Dr. Jekyll form you can see that violent darkside just beneath the surface in the looks in his eyes.   This is honestly a character that didn't need a potion to become Mr Hyde, he just needed to lower his inhibitions enough to let that darkside out.  I feel like I really got a sense of that from the film when Dr. Jekyll is in Ivy's room with her, the way that he looked at her, like you could almost see the wolf under his sheep's clothing so to speak.  He made me feel uncomfortable watching him, after the film had acquainted us with his sweet girlfriend Beatrix.  I honestly feel like if it wasn't for Lanyon walking in on them in the kiss, I think that wolf would have come out and I think Mr Hyde would have come out without the need of the potion he would later develop, I think that Mr. Hyde is just a personification of his lust and wickedness, rather than an actual monster.   In that sense this film is almost more terrifying than the original novel, just terrifying in a drastically different way.  This terrifying film we have seen both in real life and in films and literature throughout history, but instead of a potion created in an obsessed doctors lab, we have seen it in come from a bottle at the neighborhood liquor store.  This film is a morality play, about the monster that lies within us all, the monster of unbridled lust, the monster of anger, the monster of power and domination over those weaker, or the desire of those things.   This film tells us that there is a wickedness that lies in all of our hearts, Dr. Jekyll even says so himself at a dinner party, and I really do feel that the potion in this film is little more than symbolizing alcohol, drugs, or anything else that could cause us to lower our inhibitions enough to let out that wickedness that lies within our hearts, the dark impulses to hurt, to possess, and to control, and above all to be cruel, when our normal self would retain control over those impulses, thoughts, and feelings.   So though, this film is a bit slow paced, it is a great film, and quite effective in its moral story telling. 

If you have not yet seen this film, I do highly recommend it, I don't know if I would call it a "must-see" but I do think it is worth checking out, and thinking about.  I do feel like the film is well cast, and though the story is a bit slow paced it is still effective and totally worth seeing, and should be in every film collectors library.  The film might only hold an average rating on film review sites, but I think if you take a little bit of a deeper look at it, and see it as a moral allegory, I feel like it deserves a much higher ranking.