The Duck Speaks

Source:
Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1931)
Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1941)

Okay, before we get into this, you may want to re-visit my first review of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde here. It is considerably longer and more interesting.

Even more importantly, you should check out Lyzard’s review of the 1931 film with Frederic March and Chad’s take on the Spencer Tracy remake. What you’re reading now is a brief look at the nature of both those films in relation to Stevenson’s original novella; Lyz and Chad take a much more in-depth approach, and if you’re unfamiliar with the movies and are the sort of person who regularly goes beyond the assigned reading, their essays will fill in the gaps. (Also, I expect they’re excellent, thought I haven’t read them yet.)

That said, here’s another preface; as a life-long throat clearer, I don’t feel comfortable starting any commentary without getting out my share of “ahems.” It’s been a while, hasn’t it? For all intents and purposes, The Duck Speaks has been in loose retirement for a few years now, and I don’t see that changing any time soon. These reviews take a lot of time, and I’ve never been completely satisfied with my output here; non-fiction writing isn’t exactly my cuppa, and while there are a few pieces in the archives that aren’t entirely humiliating, by and large, I give this site more points for concept than execution. Dear lord, some of the sentences I’ve come up with here. You’d think I was getting paid but the sub-clause.

But it’s not a completely lost cause. I wouldn’t except DS to start updating any time soon, but that doesn’t mean I’ve quit writing all together. In fact, one of the reasons this place has languished so terribly in the past months is that I’ve got an actual job these days doing criticism. Yeah, no joke—somebody’s paying me to do this stuff. If you need to get your Zack Handlen fix, go to The Onion AV Club. I started doing book reviews back in February, and these days I’m also covering some shows for the TV Club section. It’s fun stuff, but it takes a lot of time; four shows, plus a book a week, plus my library job.

Oh, and there’s also the novel I’m editing. Some of you may have read the first draft a couple years back when I posted it online. There’ve been changes since then (most significantly, I’ve taken out a lot of the crap); I’m on the final go through, and I should be finished by the end of November. Then it’s time to start collecting rejection slips from literary agents.

So things are going well for me, but in ways that mean The Duck Speaks is essentially caput. Before we go, however…

Of all the different versions of Jekyll & Hyde I’ve seen, not one has made a real effort at staying true to the original story. That’s not surprising in and of itself; the liberties taken with Dracula and Frankenstein set a definite precedent, and Stevenson’s book does have certain structural quirks that make it difficult to faithfully adapt. And yet, of the Big Three, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde seems the most suited to a literal translation. Mary Shelly’s novel is clunky and poorly paced, Stoker’s book wanders a bit through the mid-section, but Stevenson stays on target from the opening chapter to the final page. It’s a superbly lean piece of writing, short enough that nothing cries out to be cut, but long enough not to demand any extraneous subplots.

But time and again, we see those subplots interjected. The March and Tracy films both follow the same rough trajectory: Jekyll is a brilliant doctor with an interest in the duality of man’s mind. He’s got a fiancée he’s smitten with, but his soon to be father-in-law is a bit of a stick in the mud; he’s set the date for the wedding months in the future, and no amount of argument will change his mind. One evening while walking home, Jekyll saves a beautiful young woman from a beating—the young woman, seeing Jekyll’s gentility, makes romantic/sexual advances, which Jekyll fends off. But he’s clearly intrigued, and his frustration over his absent fiancée drives him to finish his experiments and create a formula that will bring out his evil side: the loathsome Mr. Hyde. Once freed, Hyde immediately seeks out the young woman, sets her up in a lavish apartment, and proceeds to abuse and torment her; the abuse has a sexual component we never see directly, but there’s no denying that the poor captive has been raped multiple times, and put in fear of her life. Jekyll’s fiancée’s father finally relents and approves of a faster wedding, and Jekyll swears of his potion for good. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy; after the young woman Hyde’s been abusing tracks Jekyll down, Jekyll spontaneously turns into Hyde and murders her. He manages to transform back into Jekyll and breaks off his engagement to his fiancée; but the change happens again, and this time, Hyde murders the father. In both films, Jekyll/Hyde is ultimately trapped in his own laboratory, where he is shot and killed after turning into Hyde one last time.

There’s a lot of subtext here about sexual repression and the presumption of male privilege, but that’s more for Lyz and Chad; for this site, what’s most interesting is the transformation of Stevenson’s Jekyll. Instead of a middle-aged bachelor, he’s now a young (or, in Tracy’s case, apparently young) up-and-comer, a leading figure in the scientific community, and, perhaps the biggest change, he’s engaged. We’ve seen this before in the Barrymore version, but it’s worth saying again; the engagement puts Jekyll into an entirely new light. He was always a bastard, but by giving him a hostage to fortune, he’s entirely unforgivable.

And that’s not even taking into account the presence of Hyde’s hostage. One of the key aspects of the original version is his baseless, undirected malevolence. Hyde was a creature of impulse and unchecked rage; he had a certain base cunning about him (as seen in the way he handled the trampling incident), but he wasn’t much of a plotter. As far you can tell from the original story, he does some drinking and whoring, probably beats up anybody who looks at him crosswise, and then comes home. There’s no indication that he’s a perpetual threat to anyone; while he does violence (and eventually murder), his effectiveness as a threat is relegated largely to an internal one. In other words, we’re not scared of Hyde because he might hurt us; we’re scared of Hyde because he might be us.

Contrast that with the March and Tracy films! Poor Ivy-1 and Ivy-2 (as Lyz dubbed her) are put through what we can only imagine to be a series of degrading and painful sexual humiliations. Neither version goes in to much detail—standards of the time being what they were—but for once, we get a clear sense of a character suffering long term damage from their association with Hyde. It’s not simply about him lashing out in a fit of pique; his treatment of Ivies is habitual and extends over a period of weeks. In Stevenson’s book, the relationship between Hyde and Jekyll was at least understandable; monstrously selfish, no question, and Jekyll certainly got his just deserts, but you could at least sympathize with someone wanting to through back the rigors of repression without any of the consequences. Here, it’s nearly impossible to justify Jekyll’s willingness to become Hyde again and again. March’s Jekyll is a passionate, somewhat arrogant romantic, while Tracy’s Jekyll is equally arrogant but more composed; neither men give any indication of their apparent potential as gruesome sadists.

If the point is to tell us that every man has a dark side, it doesn’t work. The March version fares somewhat better; his intensity as Jekyll gives the spastic, ape-like Hyde some justification. You could argue that Tracy’s more reserved performance as both character increases their connection as well—his Hyde is a raspy-voiced sociopath, as opposed to March’s more energetic psychotic. But where both movies fail is creating a believable connection between the two characters. We’re given a reasons as to why they make their change—again, March more than Tracy—but we never really understand how aware Jekyll is of Hyde’s actions. After the initial choice is made, even though both Jekylls intentionally take the potion, the stories play out more like a werewolf tragedy. The sense of personal responsibility is somewhat diminished; in either version, Jekyll seems to disappear for the climax. We see him in his laboratory as the police track him down, we see him deny his guilt, but his personality is gone.

By introducing a fiancée and a “mistress,” the filmmakers have created an insoluble problem. The original Jekyll’s actions were consistent with what we knew of his character; a hypocrite who surface actions masked a deep fury against convention and standard morality. When he dosed himself, and kept on dosing himself, it made sense for him to do so. But by trying to present Jekyll as a more traditional hero at the outset, one with an actual fulfilling life and people who cared for him, the movies make his motivation far difficult to follow, turning the ending into a sort of contractual obligation: he tampered in god’s, etc, etc, enjoy the bullet wound.

Still, for all the problems the changes create, both Jekyll & Hyde films have a lot to recommend them. Simply comparing and contrasting March and Tracy’s respective performances is a treat. At his best, March’s intensity gives his Jekyll a magnetism and his Hyde the terrifying threat of unpredictable violence; at his worst, Hyde comes across as a buffoon. With Tracy, it goes the other way—he’s a far more controlled actor, and occasionally that lets the tension ebb when it should be growing. Perhaps some sort of Brundlefly version of the two would’ve worked better…

As for the secondary characters, March’s fiancée Rose Hobart is a bit stronger than Tracy’s bland-and-blonde Lana Turner, but both Ivies are effective, and nearly justify the confusion they cause in the movies’ thematic content. Miriam Hopkins gets to be a bit saucier than Ingrid Bergman, but Bergman’s striking screen presence makes her victimization more horrifying. In either case, Ivy’s arc is a painful one, and at times, it’s more compelling than the main plot. (Not to get all Mary Reilly or anything, but I would’ve loved to have seen a whole movie from Ivy’s perspective. As it is, once she gets killed, both movies lose a lot of their drama.)

There’s more, too, including a damnable creepy whistle and a pair of fever-dream transformations that are waaaay riskier than you’d expect. But I’ll leave those up to Lyz and Chad, since this piece is hella late. Good news: there’s also another three-way conversation for your reading pleasure, where my contributions are nearly as marginal as this essay was. (Although in the conversation, I don’t get to waste a page talking about my life.)

Jekyll (1931): QQQ
Jekyll(1941):QQ.5