Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
SOURCE:
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The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson
SCREEN:
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Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, directed by John S. Robertson
COMPARE/CONTRAST:
Alan Moore once wrote that the world needs new heroes. The old ones, he argued, were no long relevant; too much of their exploits have been exposed by time, now seen in the light of modern psychoanalysis and cultural empathy to be at best obsolete and at worst, actively harmful.
What, then, of villains? If the newly recognized complexity of the human mind defeats the standard square-jawed protagonist of old, what becomes of the antagonist, that mustache twirling bastard burns down orphanages for no clear reason beyond his designated nature? He seems just as diminished as his traditional foe, albeit in the opposite direction. Dracula loses his bite (sorry, sorry) if he’s being driven by lost love and a penchant for young hotties. Darth Vader’s growls become asthmatic gasps when the man behind the mask is Hayden freakin’ Christensen.
Written decades before any of this became an issue, Steven’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde manages the neat trick of providing an answer without ever really acknowledging the question: it’s pro- and an- tagonist are one and the same person. While the lawyer, Mr. Utterson, serves as an audience surrogate for most of the novella, (sort of) heroic Jekyll is the driving force, and his struggles against the villainous Hyde transform the Victorian’s thoroughly capitalized notions of Good and Evil into inescapable flesh.
Utterson, whose character can be best described as “consistent,” is out for a walk one evening with his friend Richard Enfield. While on their rambles, they come across a particular doorway that strikes both men as disagreeable. Enfield informs Utterson that the door reminds him of a most peculiar incident. Some night earlier, he happened to be passing by the very spot on which they now stand, and witnessed a thoroughly horrid man bump into and then trample over a young girl. The man was quickly accosted by Enfield and a crowd of concerned citizens, who demand he pay the recompense to the injured child.
Hyde—for that was the man’s name—is forced by the size of the crowd to give in. He enters the disagreeable doorway and returns moments later with a check, signed by the respectable Dr. Henry Jekyll.
The news of Jekyll’s involvement distresses Utterson, as he is both lawyer and friend to the good doctor. To think he might be associated with such a immoral fiend-! Utterson questions Enfield more as to the nature of this Hyde, but all Enfield can say is that Hyde is utterly repulsive for reasons which lie beyond his abilities to adequately describe. There’s nothing specifically wrong with the man; but his features, when combined, result in a shockingly abhorrent whole.
Over a period of time, Utterson learns more of Hyde and his inescapable connection to Jekyll. The door which Hyde entered in Enfield’s story is actually the back entrance to Jekyll’s own laboratory, located just off the doctor’s home. Jekyll changes his will to include Hyde, and instructs his servants that the contemptible creature is to be given full authority of the household. Hyde’s misdeeds continue, culminating finally in the brutal, unprovoked murder of an elderly man. This attracts the attention of the law, forcing Jekyll to officially (and with a good deal of guilt) cut ties with his apparent protégé.
But the connection between the two men, whatever it may be, is not so easily severed. Utterson becomes ever more concerned about the fate of his friend, until he is called to Jekyll’s house one night by a servant who believes that the doctor is no longer in his right mind. They break into Jekyll’s laboratory to find Hyde’s dead body on the floor; and a confession written in Jekyll’s hand explaining his relationship to the murderer and his own terrible fate.
To a modern audience, the structural dancing about the bush which takes up most of Stevenson’s story seems frustratingly unnecessary. Everyone knows that Hyde is Jekyll, Jekyll Hyde, and the time spent with Utterson as he unravels the plot keeps us away from what perhaps should’ve been the novella’s true focus—the horrible Mr. Hyde. For all the intimations made about his character, we’re never really privy to Hyde’s misdeeds; the two acts of violence he commits that we know of happen while he’s on his way home. One can’t help but wonder what mischief he gets up too while out on the town. (After all, it’s doubtful that Jekyll willingly transformed himself into his evil alter ego simply to rough up a child and beat an old man to death.)
But perhaps concessions should be made to the times—perhaps the suggestion of vice was more acceptable than any explicit description might have been. There is something to be said for insinuation; in the hands of a talented writer (and Stevenson is one, no question), implication and conjecture are often just as unsettling as real facts. Seeing Hyde getting drunk and groping the waitress, while transgressive for the period, wouldn’t hold much weight today; without any hard facts, Hyde’s dalliances take on a surprisingly sinister quality, as though he were committing acts to atrocious for the human mind to contemplate.
The novella’s structure also introduces the premise in a way that makes it difficult to ignore. There’s a fundamental reality to the London Stevenson gives us, with gossip and conjecture providing a surprisingly concrete foundation for the story’s supernatural core. And it is supernatural, science be damned; one of Jekyll’s colleague’s, Dr. Lanyon, repeatedly expresses his objections to the man’s pursuit of the standard Things Which Are Not to Be Meddled With. Once you start making potions that change your personality and drastically alter your physical appearance, there’s at least an intimation of sorcery, even if no one is wearing a pointy hat.
The terribly repressive nature of Victorian society has been well-documented, and that it would lead to the sort of schizoid personality that Jekyll works so hard to encourage isn’t much of a surprise. We can assume that Jekyll’s unfortunate impulses were towards sexuality activity and drug use; and even drug use may not have been of much importance, given that people generally indulge in drink and worse to remove the restraints that Jekyll has already dealt with through less conventional means. (You could use the novella as a metaphor for any sort of addiction, really—the fact that a literal drug is needed to begin the doctor’s downfall makes the narcotic connection inescapable.)
So, let’s say sex, then, for want of any hard facts. (Good lord, I hope that wasn’t a pun.) There’s something pitiful about a fifty year old man who’s so desperate not to lose the respect of his peers that he’s willing to break all natural laws, just so he can get some tail on the side. (But maybe it’s not female tail he’s after?) To the Victorian mind, biological urges existed largely as a way to test one’s commitment to God and civilization. Indulging in any sort of desire could only be permitted through the most rigorous of social contexts, which meant personal standards were inordinately high. So high that failure was nearly inevitable; the sort of failure Jekyll finds himself rushing towards, torn between the demands of society and his own internal needs. The solution he finds, while ultimately a failure, does have a certain ironic elegance to it.
A phenomenal success upon publication, Jekyll & Hyde would inspire stage plays and, eventually, a long series of film adaptations. One of the earliest, and best, is the 1920 silent movie John Barrymore in the title role. Filmed in 1920, the movie marks the first full-length version of the novella, although the story had been making the rounds nearly since the invention of film.
Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde wastes no time in introducing us to the title character. After an opening title card setting up the moral of the story ("We are who we most want to be,"), we see Barrymore laboring over a microscope and conferring with a colleague, Dr. Lanyon (Charles Lane). Lanyon is impressed with Jekyll’s work, but advises him to stick to the “natural sciences.”
While this scene doesn’t exist in the original story verbatim, it does agree with what we’re told about the relationship between Lanyon and Jekyll. The movie then establishes the utter purity of Jekyll’s character; others discuss how he gives his life to his work, and he even runs a health clinic for the poor and destitute. The long hours he spends there make him late to any social engagements, and also attract the attentions of Sir George Carew (Brandon Hurst), an older man of some great experience. Over dinner, Carew questions Jekyll as to how he can be sure of his soul if he’s never been truly tempted. Jekyll, while initially hostile to the idea, reluctantly agrees to a night on the town, so that Carew can give him a better idea of what he’s missing.
One surprisingly hot dancing girl later, Jekyll has his world tilted and decides to take his dabbling in “unnatural” science one step further; he will transform himself in to a different person in order that he might indulge the sweet tooth that Carew has instilled in him. He succeeds, and Hyde is born, an evil grinning embodiment of Jekyll’s own newly awakened lust.
Initially, Jekyll’s plan seems to be working. Hyde rents a room for himself and hooks up with the hot dancing girl, while Jekyll maintains his usual noble self. But the wear and tear of leading a double life nags at him. He establishes a relationship with Carew’s daughter, Millicent (Martha Mansfield), and swears off his other life. Unfortunately, this doesn’t quite “take,” and the next time he turns into Hyde, the connection between the two men becomes publicly known. Sir Carew visits Jekyll to demand he explain his relationship with such a villain. Jekyll angrily rants that it’s Carew’s fault for tempting him in the first place. Then he changes into Hyde potion-free and beats Carew to death in the courtyard.
Clearly, some changes have been made from the Stevenson’s version. Instead of Utterson’s discovery of the Jekyll’s dual nature, the doctor takes center stage, changing the emphasis from cautionary tale to tragedy. The moral is still there, unquestionably, but presenting Jekyll’s downfall in chronological order makes us more accomplice to his choices than in the original story. In keeping with this change, Jekyll himself becomes more of a tragic hero; his initial goodness is given greater stress, and when he experiments with Hyde, he only does so after being led to corruption by the wicked Carew.
Or is he wicked? It’s possible to paint him as in some way responsible for the events of the film, but there’s something in what he tells Jekyll, about the values of fully experiencing life. While Carew may have sampled too deeply of vice, it’s repeatedly stressed that he’s managed to bring his daughter up “right,” ("right” at the time being “virginal and naïve,” admittedly, but he clearly loves her and wants to protect her), and he’s made more peace with his inner hungers than Jekyll ever manages. There’s a definite sense of Jekyll trying to achive perfection with his acts of goodness, and that when Carew questions the nature of his worth, he is vulnerable to the temptation because of his absolutism of purpose. Perhaps he’s a victim who would have led a blame-free life had it not been for a Carew’s influence; but one can’t help be at least a little suspicious of one so easily led.
While their routes to sin were different, both versions of Jekyll create Hyde in order to indulge themselves without having to worry about the consequences. Here the film version really gets going; Barrymore makes a solid, charismatic hero, but as lechery personified, he’s nothing short of brilliant, conveying bottomless contempt and debauchery by a simple twist of the hand. (The make-up is excellent too.) Any scene with Hyde makes for compelling viewing, and unlike the novella, here we at least get a clear impression of where his yearnings take him—it’s sex, no doubt whatsoever, and there’s even a brief insinuation of deviance that seems remarkably bold for the period. (We talk about this briefly in the discussion linked to at the end of the review; Lyz suggests the moment may just be about Hyde passing up one barfly for another, but if you watch closely, right before the cut, Hyde is embracing both women. Yowza.)
One of the reason’s Barrymore’s Hyde succeeds so nicely is that, even with Evil practically stamped across his forehead, there’s something undeniably charismatic in the man. It’s easy to believe he has enough magnetism to attract various lowlifes, which makes it all the more shocking late in the film when he snaps and murders Carew. Up until that moment, it’s possible to believe that Jekyll’s dalliance with the dark side of things is ultimately harmless; he hurts some feelings, and there is the bit of trampling, but it’s largely the act of a heretofore restrained temperament finally getting a little breathing room. Nothing unredeemable happens; Hyde is a jerk, but who isn’t a jerk from time to time?
But the Carew murder changes this. It’s one of the movie’s most effective sequences; the two men argue, and then Jekyll just snaps. For the first time, he changes into Hyde without benefit of his magic potion, and the hideous grin on his face forces you to realize that all the apparently harmless indulgences were leading to this fatal moment. He beats Carew to death still grinning, and from then on his doom is sealed.
In Stevenson’s story, the most disturbing thing about Hyde committing murder is the sheer arbitrariness of the act. As far as we can tell, he doesn’t know his victim at all; the man simply passes a pleasantry to Hyde on the street, and Hyde snaps. In the movie, Hyde’s motives are quite clear. Carew is both the symbolic cause of Jekyll’s growing self-hatred and the obstacle in his path to happiness. The change shifts the focus from the general to the specific—Stevenson is making a case for the evil in every man’s heart to be the unrestrained potential of destruction, while in the Barrymore film, evil is a surrender to the worst of one’s impulses. The Hyde in the novella would be the same for anyone who repeated Jekyll’s experiments; the movie-Hyde is an intimately personal monster.
There’s also the fact that the novella had no fiancé character for Jekyll to latch on to. There are no prominent female characters in the story (future Julia Roberts vehicles notwithstanding), and Millicent’s presence in the film humanizes Jekyll, and changes his eventual self-sacrifice from a shamed suicide to a surprisingly selfless attempt to save the life (and virtue) of the woman he loves. It also makes Jekyll as much of a hero as is possible in a tale where every moment of violence and horror stems from his own poor choices.
Novella-Jekyll and movie-Jekyll finally find themselves at the whim of their own worst nature, unable to control their transformations and left to hide from the eyes of the world their own inescapable guilt. This is just desserts, no question, but it’s possible to pity the doctor’s fate. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde posits that, just as a nation, a man divided against himself cannot stand. Unintentionally or not, there’s also the suggestion that impossible to achieve standards cause more harm than good; and that those who cannot accept their capacity for sin are doomed to damn themselves over and over again. The Barrymore film remains an effective expression of such concerns, and a terrific example of early horror cinema to boot.
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SCREEN: QQQQ
Whoever put together the Madacy DVD release really needs to rethink their music choices.
But you’re not done yet!
And You Call Yourself a Scientist:
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde(1912)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde(1913)
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly:
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde(1920, Sheldon Lewis version)
And when you’re finished, check Lyz, Chad and my discussion of all four films:
