[j. d. worthington]

Watched John S. Robertson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920) with John Barrymore. Again, I have the good fortune to have a copy of the restored print, and it really is a lovely film in a lot of ways. Barrymore, like Mansfield, did the transformation in one single, unedited take (save for the closeup of the hands immediately afterward), which is really quite remarkable, given the way he managed to change his appearance without aid of makeup or special effects. It remains relatively faithful to the plot of Stevenson's book, and even several of the philosophical queries it raises, though it does introduce a few rather hackneyed points (Millicent's father "tempting" Jekyll into his fall much the same way as Lord Henry Wotton tempted Dorian Gray, for example), but these weren't particularly overdone, and didn't detract from the film as a whole. Interesting that Barrymore's Hyde varies (depending on his emotions at the time) from being a somewhat shaky, almost doddering creature, to a spidery figure, to an absolutely manic, primate-in-a-rage characterization which certainly captures the fiendishness of the figure, if not the exact physical description given by the author. (For one thing, Barrymore is much too tall to quite manage that.)

An interesting and enjoyable take on the story, if quite short (67 minutes).

Tonight -- circumstances permitting, I'll be tackling what is often considered the definitive film version, the Rouben Mamoulian film of 1931, starring Fredric March....