Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920/II)

I'm hardly up on my history of cinema, but I suspect the temptation to use film as a vehicle for moralizing started the instant people began to develop the capabilities to produce movies that were longer and more complex than scenes of moving trains or people sneezing. This makes it tragic that, in all that time, no one figured out that moral, cultural, evangelical, social, and political lessons film must, like pills in dog food, be carefully lodged into the texture of the piece. No one likes a sermon with a story stapled to it except the people who can be counted on to applaud the message – and sometimes not even them. Unfortunately, not only have people continued to ignore this scrap of advice, but also once in a while someone makes an adaptation of another work and remodels it into their own personal treatise, despite the fact that the aforementioned work is rich in themes of its own. A prime example of this kind of film is the mostly and rightfully forgotten 1920 adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with Sheldon Lewis.

Made the same year as a much more fondly remembered adaptation starring John Barrymore, this attempt wears the stitch-marks of a patchwork job, sewn together on the fly to siphon some green off the success of its bigger-name counterpart. Most noticeably, the filmmakers jettisoned the late Victorian London setting of the original and placed the story in the cheaper and easier to produce setting of the contemporary United States. Next we can tell early on that the plot is disjointed and rushed to the point of incoherency. The course of the plot is roughly the same as the Barrymore version – Jekyll invents the potion, becomes addicted to the release offered by the Hyde persona (his “evil genius”, as the film puts it), loses complete control when his fiancée leaves him, and spirals down toward self-destruction – but stripped of any logical progression for Jekyll's reactions to his new dual nature or for Hyde's crimes and their eventual culmination into a murderous rampage. It is impossible to watch without feeling as though the filmmakers went through a checklist, which in fact they probably did.

There is only one element that sets this adaptation apart from the other films that followed Robert Louis Stevenson's novel and the stage version: the evangelical moralizing. Unsurprisingly, even this is as handled as clumsily as the other aspects of the film. From the first scene, Jekyll is established as a philanthropist who gives medical treatment to the children of the very poor. He comes across the case of a girl who is “dead and yet alive”, a condition that Jekyll hopes to exploit to prove the non-existence of the human soul. Frankly I watched the film three times and I couldn't figure out what this materialism-affirming illness was; it just looked like the girl was in a coma. One would expect, given the emphasis these scenes are given, that they would play a significant role in the plot or at least provide the push toward Jekyll developing the formula. One would be very, very wrong. Not only is there no real connection ever built between these scenes and the subsequent sequence where Jekyll experiments with his formula, but the comatose (or whathaveyou) girl and her mother are never seen again. We’re apparently supposed to find Jekyll’s philanthropy undermined by his determination to disprove the existence of a spiritual reality and that his work is alienating him from his fiancée and loved ones, but it’s hard not to notice that, while Jekyll is saving lives, his girlfriend and their pals are typical specimens of the Gilded Age leisure class, spending their days playing cards and going to the opera. If only a teenage Ayn Rand had shown up to lecture Jekyll on how his charity work is limiting his potential as a heroic being, then I would have given the filmmakers a pass…

Anyway, the movie takes a 180-degree turn away from the established story and into the surreal. After an enraged Hyde murders Jekyll’s friend as well as his (now) ex-fiancée, the police manage to arrest Hyde. When Hyde turns back to Jekyll, the police get the full story out of him. Next we see Hyde being strapped to the electric chair. However, suddenly we discover, like Victoria Principal in “Dallas” sans a nude Patrick Duffy, that it was all a dream. Jekyll dreamed most of the movie while dozing in his chair. Overjoyed that he didn’t kill his fiancée and closest friend after all, he announces to the world that he’ll pay more attention to his loved ones and he believes in God now too. Presumably Jekyll is also going to get with the Harding-Coolidge program and abandon his charitable practice for a career of talking around a table, card-playing, and opera-watching.

It is almost disconcerting how much this movie is like a post-Hayes Code film, nearly two decades before the Hayes Code went into effect, particularly in how it tries to use horror to make a moral point while simultaneously assuring the audience that nothing bad actually happens and the monster was never “real.” Then there’s the assurance of the benevolence and power of law and order (I believe more time is spent showing the police tracking down Hyde than with Jekyll’s reactions to becoming Hyde) and the decision to actually show Hyde getting caught by traditional police officials, a complete break with other versions of the story. Of course, tossing aside Jekyll and Hyde’s eventual self-destruction for, of all things, an ending where the State executes him (them?) is a textbook example of “missing the damn point.”

As for the film’s Important Message itself, we’re simply assured that Jekyll is wayward, alienated from both his circle of intimates and religion by his obsession with science, but his culpability in Hyde’s crimes is never really made clear. One scene he recants and acts the victim, the next he’s arranging an apartment for Hyde to continue his nocturnal adventures. Also, as with much later films like Mark of the Beast and Left Behind, we have to wonder where the miraculous revelation of faith comes from. Instead of taking the obvious tract of having Jekyll turning to religion to triumph over Hyde, essentially the evangelical message of this adaptation is that God is perfectly willing to give you a sociopathic alter-ego and have you kill your loved ones in order to make a vague point.

Down to the gritty details, is the film’s Hyde at least interesting? All the early adaptations I know of went for the somewhat deformed, if not downright monstrous, Hyde, and this movie follows the trend. However, Hyde just comes across as a very unattractive man in need of a haircut and some medication to control his frequent nervous tics. In his Jekyll persona, Sheldon Lewis simply looks bored, if not outright drugged. Even the potential historical interest the film might generate is limited. It barely ranks as an early horror film or adaptation of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” The only element exceptional about this film is its demented ingenuity in turning “Jekyll and Hyde” into a contemporary Christian morality play, but even then these new points are ineptly poured in, mixing with Stevenson’s own allegories like oil and water. It’s a film that deserves to be remembered, but only as an extremely poor and downright bizarre adaptation of a timeless and archetypal story.

Now go read:

The novel and the 1920 John Barrymore film version at The Duck Speaks.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1912) at And You Call Yourself A Scientist!.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1913), also at ACYS

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