Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Gina, Who Faced Her World Alone

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920)
directed by John S. Robertson
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
watched instantly on Netflix

I like that Jekyll embraces his own scientific curiosity and allows the older man at the party to tempt him towards misbehavior. I like that, once committed to sin, Jekyll's scientific mind compels him to seek the most extreme manifestation of his "baser impulses." Stevenson's story can be read as an indictment of the Victorian upper class, but Barrymore gifts Hyde a purer cruelty, exploiting Jekyll's moral loophole completely.

Jekyll's suicide implies that the murder of Millicent's father is a worse deed than the humiliation of Gina and the woman at the bar. But Millicent's father was Hyde in his youth, to a lesser degree. Gina is mesmerizing when we first see her on stage (silent films give you a less guarded perspective on the moment of discovery that made some faces stars), but Hyde ruins her. When the spider appears - such a spider! - it moves absolutely like a dancer, mutated beneath a spell to some grotesque abomination.

The opium den in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is the template for the look and the feel of the film. Part of it is age and the deep shadows that fill old prints. Part is the simplicity of Barrymore's transformation, familiar but captivating as the moon. Gas lamps whimper and gin drinkers stumble and something seeps through the alleyways. It is a better universe for atmosphere than allegory, but Stevenson himself was clever enough to know that, whatever else he may have wanted to say.