Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941)

Once the studios got around to actually enforcing it, the Hays or Production Code finished off in a stroke Hollywood's pre-World War II Golden Age (although the studios' monopoly on the means of production and distribution was at least the handle of the axe). Among the hardest hit was the horror genre. While when it came to horror the Hays Code wasn't as strict as its spiritual successor, the 1950s Comics Code which explicitly banned depictions of vampires and werewolves in comic books, it did place restrictions on how violence and deaths could be portrayed and made it difficult, if not impossible, to release a film where evil "won." More than a list of rules, though, the Hays Code was meant to put the entire American film industry at the service of a moral ideology. Right in the language of its general principles, the Hays Code intended to see all Hollywood movies become propaganda extolling the triumph of "traditional" values. Horror, with its inherent tendencies to portray the sinister sides of human nature and mainstream society and expose a world where there can be no certainties, was not meant to thrive in the sort of Hollywood supporters of the Code envisioned. In fact, it arguably did not, at least not until Cold War anxieties provided a new itch for horror films to scratch. But all that's another story...

A perfect example for how the Code affected horror films in its heyday is the 1941 version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a remake of another version made ten years before starring Frederic March. Without listing all the differences (that's for the discussion linked to below!), the March version, which came out at a time when enforcement of the Code was tepid at best, was more explicit, if only by inches, in its depiction of sexual matters - a little skin here, an all but explicit reference to a character being a prostitute there. However, there is also a difference in tone, and the 1941 Hyde is unmistakably more restrained, despite its apparently willingness to draw a less than flattering parallel between Victorian Britain and the escalating social conservatism of the United States in the 1940s. Indeed, this version even starts in a church with a minister none too subtly praising the homely virtues exhibited by Queen Victoria and the efforts to make sure everyone else followed suit. The puritanical tirade is promptly interrupted by a mentally unbalanced parishoner, who accuses the priest of wanting to "take the fun out of life."

Witnessing this outburst is Dr. Jekyll (Spencer Tracy!), who promptly has the man taken out of the church and spirited away to a sanitarium. The incident, and the fact that the man in question apparently wasn't the same after suffering some sort of mining accident, spurs on Jekyll's interest in dividing the good and evil in human nature, leaving the evil side to disperse. Unfortunately, Jekyll is in full "Meddlin' in God's Domain" mode, and is inclined to blurting out his theory to anyone who shows the slightest interest in his work, even to a party full of stuffy upper-class folk. Particularly disapproving is his friend Dr. Lanyon (Ian Hunter), who urges Jekyll to just focus on his patients, and Sir Charles (Donald Crisp), the archtypal Victorian who just happens to be the father of Jekyll's beloved and betrothed, Beatrix (Lana Turner!). Even though Sir Charles even hints at disapproving of Jekyll's marriage to Beatrix, Jekyll is much too convinced that he's on the cusp of curing evil itself to turn back now.

It's hardly any wonder why Jekyll is a workaholic; he doesn't have much of a social life. Sir Charles hovers over him and Beatrix like the chaperone from Hell, mumbling and wagging his finger and belting out choice "I say"s (okay, honestly, I don't believe his character ever actually says that) at the slightest display of physical affection between the two. Poor Beatrix herself is chomping at the bit but much too afraid to even speak out a word against her father and, in reference to Jekyll's own theories, tells him that wanting to express how they feel about each other "can't be evil", but she's still too timid to even seriously consider defying her father. An opportunity to finally relieve his tension comes when he and Lanyon, riding through London, come across a man attempting to rape a barmaid, Ivy (Ingrid Bergman!). After Jekyll and Lanyon chase off the would-be rapist, a grateful Ivy claims to have been injured - and her injuries seem to magically worsen the more Lanyon tries to get Jekyll to leave with him. Jekyll "reluctantly" consents to give Ivy a private examination in her apartment and finds that Ivy's injuries are at rather strategic parts of her body. The two kiss and, despite the clear influence of the Code, they seem not far away from doing more, but Lanyon, ever the Victorian buzzkill, impatiently interrupts and insists that they leave. Ivy takes it all in good stride and tells Jekyll he can return anytime. On their way again, Jekyll admits to Lanyon that, according to his theory, his evil side triumphed when he kissed Ivy.

Something about his encounter with Ivy encourages Jekyll in his experiments, which result in the creation of a single potion (incidentally, in a realistic step-up from the usual beakers of boiling, colorful liquids, you do get shots of Jekyll feverishly writing down formulas). His planned test subject, the mad miner from the church, dies, however, so Jekyll considers exposing himself to the potion, even though his lab mice and rabbits all turn from cuddly to homicidal within minutes. Still, he makes the fateful decision to test it, and after enduring violent and very explicit visions of Beatrix and Ivy turns into Mr. Hyde, who resembles Jekyll but with deformed teeth, a bestial expression, and wild white hair and bushy eyebrows, for just one minute. Beatrix interrupts, claiming she had a nightmare where she lost Jekyll forever. Jekyll, back to his normal self already, tries to reassure her, but they're interrupted by a scowling Sir Charles, convinced that Beatrix was trying to get an old-fashioned honeymoon preview. Angrily he declares that Beatrix will be joining him on a tour of Europe and only when they return will she be allowed to marry Jekyll - unless Sir Charles changes his mind.

A despondent - and, let's face it, sexually frustrated - Jekyll does the unthinkable and drinks the potion again. The film is a little ambiguous about his motives, although the fact that the first thing Hyde does is head to the burlesque house where Ivy serves beer is a pretty good indication of what Jekyll was hoping for. From the start it's clear that Hyde enjoys inflicting humiliation and chaos for no good reason, but he stays focused on getting his paws on Ivy, who turns him down and is rightfully terrified of Hyde. Unfortunately, Hyde is too clever just to be a brute, and sparks a brawl that consumes the entire establishment and convinces the management - with the help of a hefty bribe, of course - that Ivy was responsible and should be fired. Hyde then accousts. Ivy on the street and assures her that he'll take care of her - and flashes the money to prove it. Ivy, more out of desperation than anything else, agrees to ride with Hyde in a carriage.

Hyde is as good as his word and gives Beatrix a life of luxury in a palatial apartment. There is a serious drawback, though, in that Hyde has turned her into a prisoner, forcing her to sing to him and even raping and beating her when the mood strikes. It's only when Beatrix returns that Jekyll takes control again, although he finds, much to his horror, that Hyde doesn't need the potion to appear. Whatever Jekyll knows of Hyde's treatment of Ivy - the film is rather unclear on this point - he still sends her some money, but Ivy only assumes that the money is from Hyde and he's trying to make her run away, just so he can hunt her down later. At the urging of her friend, Ivy goes to see a doctor about her "nerves" and out of all the doctors in London, she happens to enter the parlor of Dr. Jekyll...

Of course, you don't need my overlong summary to tell you that the movie ends in tragedy. Nor do you need to be familiar with how the Code influenced the plots of such films to know that the final scenes hammer in the triumph of "traditional" morals over the sins of Hyde - and Jekyll, who unlike so many multiple personality suffering characters today, from Two-Face to Vicki Lord to the Hulk, hardly qualifies as a victim. Still, the movie has its subversive points, and it's hard to divorce the film from its historical context, especially when the backdrop of Victorian Britain is stressed so strongly.

Although like any halfway-decent mad scientist, Jekyll is motivated by hubris - more so than most movie Jekylls, even the more ostentatiously benevolent Jekyll from the 1931 film - his voluntary dips into the personality of Hyde are both motivated by the demands of Victorian society, conjured up in the form of Sir Charles. In fact, it's strongly implied that Jekyll turns to Hyde to do what he almost literally cannot do: have an affair with Ivy. That Hyde turns out to be a sadist and a sociopath as well as a man totally uninhibited in his libido clearly comes as a nasty surprise to Jekyll. When Jekyll does indeed reap what he sows, we're not intended to feel sympathy for him - if nothing else the prayer Jekyll's much put-upon butler says over his corpse illustrates the point that the score is "God: 1, Jekyll: 0" - but at the same time the viewer is also encouraged to understand that in a way Jekyll was pushed into surrendering to Hyde by a society that taught him that his sexual desires were inherently wrong and evil. The tragedy is that Jekyll had to learn the hard way what evil actually is.

Even with these turns into subversive territory, the Code does limit the film in several ways that are hard to ignore. The scene between Ivy and Jekyll is watered down to the point of being sterile, taking some of the punch out of the film's theme. Toward the climax Sir Charles does a 360 and becomes a much more sympathetic character, just in time for his violent death at Hyde's hands (or rather his cane). Anyone who has seen the 1931 March version will notice that Spencer Tracy was more inhibited in what he could do as Hyde than March was. The very visual nature of Hyde, who becomes simply an uglier incarnation of Jekyll, is less striking. Still, in a sense the Code actually helps this version, since it forces Spencer to take a more low-key interpretation of Hyde. Between him and Ingrid Bergman's legendary acting abilities, the scene where Hyde torments Ivy is intense, even uncomfortable. In fact, I'd go as far as to claim that the scene alone helps make the case that Tracy played one of the most effective Hydes in history. Nonetheless, Tracy's Jekyll is much too subdued, and at times comes across less as a tragic character and more as a generic interpretation of Jekyll.

In spite of the intrusion of censorship, especially at the end of the film, 1941's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde still succeeds in being a thematically complex, subtle film, particularly by the standards of most mainstream horror films. If nothing else, Spencer Tracy single-handedly proves that the most effective horror monster isn't the one that causes the bloodiest deaths or is the most unpredictably violent, but the one who works well, even realistically well, on the psychological level. Still, how does the movie fare compared to the 1931 original? For an answer to that, just look no further than a few lines down.

Now go read:

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) at And You Call Yourself A Scientist! and a comparison of both versions with the original novel at The Duck Speaks

And then join us for our discussion at: