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Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1920) |
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| The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde (2006) |
For my first post on this blog, I am going to be comparing the 1920 film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to its remake, released in 2006, titled The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This latter film uses the full title of Robert Louis Stevenson's novel of the same name, released in 1886, which both films were ultimately based upon. Ironically, this second film is also the one which disregards the original story the most, altering the characters and events almost completely to suit a modern audience.
Introducing The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
To be able to truly understand the two film adaptations of
Stevenson’s novel and why they are different to each other, it is important to
look at the context of their production. The production context of a film is,
to put it simply, the various background elements which influence the
film-makers to create the film in a particular way – such as the available
technology at the time, the studios and producers responsible for making the
film, the laws and regulations present, the popular trends – and so on. All of
these things contribute towards the end product, as the film-makers draw
inspiration from around them and use it to create a film that partially, if not
fully, reflects the time of production.
In the case of these two films, of course, the existence of
Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel is also a hugely important contextual factor to
consider. Published in 1886, it shocked the public with its horrifying content and
was read and enjoyed even by those who had never previously been interested in
reading works of fiction. In the novel, Dr. Henry Jekyll invents an elixir
which temporarily transforms him into the horrible Mr. Edward Hyde – a
manifestation of his most ‘evil’ desires. Though effective for a while at
separating the two sides of Jekyll’s personality, it soon leads to chaos as his
transformations into Hyde become unstable and, as Hyde, he begins attacking and
murdering others. Realising that the only way to stop Hyde is to die, Jekyll composes
a letter explaining the entire situation to his friend Utterson and then
seemingly goes to commit suicide.
This is the story which Stevenson created in 1886 – but how
did these two films show it on the big screen? And why did they do it in such different
ways? This is what I’m now about to explore.
The Contextual Factors
It would make the most sense, in my mind, to start at the
beginning of both films – in their pre-production stages. Considering this, the
most obvious contextual factor to consider is the period in which both films
were made. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
was a silent and black-and-white film made and released in 1920 in the Unites
States, at the time of the Edwardian era in England and a growth of economic
prosperity due to the success of the First World War for all of the victorious
nations. The Unites States was on the brink of the start of one of its most
famous and remembered periods: the “Roaring Twenties”. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in comparison, was in
full-colour and with sound and music audio, made and released in 2005 and 2006
respectively, again in the United States, this time in the middle of the Iraq
War which both the United States and the United Kingdom fought in, on the same
side, against the Ba’athist party and the Sunni and Shia insurgents. In the
same year, the Great American Boycott took place across the United States where
marchers protested for immigration rights – something which had been fought for
for a long time, being vaguely reminiscent of the various civil rights protests
in the United States throughout the 50s, 60s and 70s.
The fact that one film was in black and white and was silent
and the other in full colour with audio demonstrates just how far technology
has come between the creation times of these two films. We as human beings have
hugely developed our industry, and we can now create much more entertaining and
intriguing works for people to enjoy. The monochrome nature of the 1920 film
meant that some reels, when put together, looked blue or brown on-screen; this
sense of age and sheer primitivism is beautiful to enjoy, even now in the 21st
century. There is still something special about the oldest films we have in
existence, despite the intense and beautiful productions which we can now
create. This is the same for the audio.
These were clearly two very different times to be alive in,
and the events at the time and the advancements in industry played a huge role
in influencing the two films – the 1920 version less so due to the fact that it
was intended to directly mirror the events in Stevenson’s novel. The slight
contemporary representations in that film are shown by the prosperous lives of
the people (Jekyll goes to a party, has lots of money to keep buying the
ingredients for the potion, visits his friends whom all wear expensive clothing
etc.) and also the locations used for the film; rather than being in Victorian
England, as in the novel, they are presumably in 1920s America where the film
was made, in some of the backstreets of a small village. In comparison, the
influences of the time on the 2006 film are blatantly obvious; not only are the
buildings much more developed and industrial, making for much more modern
settings and locations, there is the presence of armed police and modern technology
such as cars, aeroplanes, computers and mobile phones. On top of this, perhaps
one of the most prevalent changes between the two eras is shown just by the
presence of Tony Todd as the actor of Jekyll and Hyde. In 1920 the core Civil
Rights movement had not even started, and African-Americans were certainly no
closer to gaining equality in the workplace or in such a high-profile industry
as film-making. The laws on African-Americans were that they had to be kept
segregated from whites, and could never use the same facilities or go to the
same places. This can easily be perceived due to the fact that no ‘black’
actors appear in the film. In 2006, in contrast, civil equality has now fully
been achieved and Todd, as someone of African-American descent, is now freely
able to work in a career of his choosing. This is a huge contextual factor which influenced the film to be the way it
is and to star and feature the people that it does.
The next logical point to focus on with regard to the
context of production is the studios who worked on creating the two films; Famous
Players-Lasky for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
and the Motion Picture Corporation (MPC) and Fantastical Cinema LLC for The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
For the version of the film that I watched, it was Fantastical Cinema LLC who were
credited as primarily creating and producing the film for release in Germany,
and as such it is them that I will focus on over the Motion Picture
Corporation.
Famous Players-Lasky was recognisably one of the biggest
companies at work during the silent era of film, and thus at the time of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’s production it
was one of the best film companies to work with, due to the fact that it was a
composite company consisting of eight smaller companies: Famous Players,
Feature Play, Oliver Morosco Photoplay, Bosworth, Cardinal, Paramount Pictures
Corporation, Artcraft, and The George M. Cohan Film Corporation. With the
president (of Famous Players-Lasky) focusing highly on the integration of
production, distribution and exhibition of film into his one single
corporation, the 1920 film was easily produced and distributed to the big
screen for viewing by audiences. On the other hand, Fantastical Cinema LLC, the
production company for the 2006 film, is barely known at all even its country
of origin. Having only ever produced three films in total to this day, the
other two of which (The Eden Project and
Saurian) are TV movies, it is
actually incredibly surprising that the film has achieved such a commercial
success. The ability and quality of the company is therefore very hard to judge
– though certainly with The Strange Case
of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde they appear to have done spectacularly with so
little, if any experience. In direct comparison to the Famous Players-Lasky
company, though, it is reasonable to say that the quality of workmanship of the
2006 film was lacking in depth and quality despite its professionalism.
Finally, I feel that a point must be made about the
directors of the two films and the budgets that they had to work with. From
here, I will move onto looking at the films themselves and their content.
Amusingly, both directors have the forename John (John S. Robertson directed Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, John Carl
Buechler directed The Strange Case of Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) but seem to have shared no other traits – when
creating their two versions of the story, they took very different routes and
made very different decisions.
John S. Robertson first became involved in the film industry
in 1915, working with the company Vitagraph. Later, of course, he moved to work
with Famous Players-Lasky, remaining a director for their films until he left
the industry in 1935 when sound films were growing in prevalence. In total he
directed 57 feature films, most of them silent, and yet his most remembered is
his rendition of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
When directing the film, he stuck very closely to the original story
expressed in the novel by Stevenson, adapting it very little to suit the time
of production. The only changes he did make were based on the 1887 stage
version of the story, directed by Thomas Sullivan and starring Richard Mansfield,
and a few contemporary edits that I will mention later on when comparing
specific scenes in the film that were executed in drastically different ways.
The exact figure of the budget that he was given by Famous Players-Lasky to
produce the film is unknown, however it is reasonable to suggest that he will
have been given quite a large sum of money due to the wealth and professional
level of the company. This will have led him to invest in some of the most
technologically advanced equipment and best-quality acting talent to make the
film into one of the best in terms of quality and authenticity at that time. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde depicts
Stevenson’s original story and John Barrymore and his fellow actors in the film
did a superb job of capturing the innocence of Jekyll, the terrifying and
horrific personality of Hyde, and the air of mystery and suspense that the
original novel creates.
Now: John Carl Buechler! In comparison to Robertson, he first
started in the film industry in 1978. He is not only a director but also a
special effects artist, a make-up artist, a producer and a screenwriter, and he
has a long history in the horror genre with famous cult names such as Troll (1986), the Halloween series and Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988) under his belt. Do you remember that
Fantastical Cinema LLC has only ever produced three films so far? Well, he was
responsible for the directing of all of them, and made them very successful
despite their limited publicity through their company itself. Where Robertson
aimed to stick very closely to the original story and concepts of the novel by
Stevenson, Buechler completely adapted the story to fit a modern audience and
the modern world. He used his knowledge of the horror genre and its conventions
to create a thoroughly repulsive film (believe me, the amount of scary scenes
and gore in it is unbelievable…) that
would induce fear in its viewers, and even managed to incorporate a comedic
element in places which could never have been achieved in the 1920 film due to
the attitudes of the people at the time and also the grave nature of the
subject matter. Saying this, he incorporates more modern issues in the 2006
version as well, making it much more relatable and interesting for modern
viewers to watch. Such issues include heart problems, incurable diseases,
animal testing, police practice, scientific methodology and, perhaps most
prevalently, increasing numbers of major assaults resulting in murder, rape
and/or serious harm. The budget for the 2006 film, though not exactly
known, has been estimated to be around $750,000 – therefore easily accounting
for all of the special effects, complex shots, and technology usage present in
Buechler’s film. Despite these factors,
however, the success in the box office was disappointing; only $19,111 was made
on its first weekend in cinemas, and the majority of the later money made was
from the DVD release as it was rated very lowly and did not receive many good
reviews from critics. In that sense, it is like a ‘marmite’ film – one that you
either love or hate.
Having considered all of these contextual factors behind the
film, I now think it prudent to actually look at the films themselves.
Comparing the Two Films' Contents
Perhaps
the most obvious point to consider about the two adaptations is how they portray
the key concepts and events of the novel in movie form. As I said above, the
2006 film, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde, ultimately changes quite a lot about the story to suit a
modern audience; in contrast, the 1920 film, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, closely follows the events of the book,
only changing a few names and the circumstances of Jekyll’s relation to Sir
Carew (he is set to marry Carew’s daughter, Millicent, who did not exist in the
novel, but in the 1887 stage version
by Thomas Russell Sullivan starring Richard Mansfield. This 1920 film version
used the play's concept of Jekyll being engaged to Carew's daughter, and Hyde
beginning a romance with a dance-hall girl.)
Before I go into specific events, however, I’m going to look
into the generalities – what is similar between the films and what is
different. The first point that I’m going to raise is both a similarity and a
difference between both films – you might wonder how that could be, but it’s
easy to explain and recognise. In both films, the concept of Jekyll’s two-sided
character is portrayed as being a form, or at least a representation of, a
multiple personality disorder, or MPD. This is, therefore, the similarity
between the two – that they both feature an MPD-suffering Jekyll.
The difference is a little more complicated, centred on the
actual portrayal of the MPD in the
two films. In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,
there is a clean distinction between the two different personalities as it is
either Jekyll or Hyde on screen, never both. This can perhaps be interpreted as
a reflection of Victorian beliefs – that people could only ever be good or evil, right or wrong. This idea is challenged in the 2006 film, where Jekyll
and Hyde do both appear on-screen at
the same time, due to the fact that Jekyll believes for a time that he is not
himself Hyde, and that Hyde is instead an entirely separate person. Hyde
therefore appears in the form of a hallucination, born of Jekyll’s own mind,
who taunts and insults Jekyll for a large majority of the film. In our modern
world, it is one of the most recognisable facts that we can all do good and bad
things. The entire 2006 film reflects this, as Jekyll does several charitable
deeds to try and make up for the murders and attacks he has committed (albeit unknowingly)
as Hyde. The only thing he knows is that he is directly associated with Hyde –
he does not realise that Hyde is infact a manifestation of himself. This is
therefore the way in which the MPD is portrayed in the modern film – as a
modern issue that many of its sufferers sometimes can’t even understand and may
not even recognise that they have.
Another difference between the two films is the actual
process of taking the drug – in the 1920 film Jekyll drinks the solution from a
glass vial, whereas in the 2006 film he injects it directly into his veins
using a hypodermic needle. This reflects both the medical knowledge of the time
and also the developments of medical equipment; Jekyll, although a doctor in
both films, is written and portrayed to only have the medical awareness that
his creators at the time had. This small change demonstrates a great many
things about the developments made in just a single century – we now take
greater care over experimentation, hygiene and medical practice, for example.
Jekyll in the modern 2006 film takes the drug after it has been tested on
numerous primates – in the 1920 film, he uses it on himself with no testing at
all. This is a hugely influential contextual factor that is often overlooked by
casual viewers, as in terms of the film it means virtually nothing towards the
plot.
In the 2006 film, Jekyll suffers from numerous ‘side effects’
of the drug he has created, suffering from bouts of illness and hallucinations
amongst others. The most major side effect is that he is completely transformed
physiologically and psychologically into Hyde – and this, that his
transformation is a ‘side effect’, is not how it is in the original story, nor
the 1920 film. In both of those, Jekyll intentionally creates the drug with the
intention of transforming into Hyde, to allow him to act in the untoward way
that he is incapable of as Jekyll, as a good-hearted doctor whose reputation
can therefore cannot be tarnished. This is therefore another huge difference
between the stories of the two films generally; one that anyone should be able
to recognise.
The final comparison I am going to make between the two
films generally is where they are both set, and during what time period. As I
said above, the presumable locations for the 1920 film were in the backstreets
of a small American village – the actual setting
in the film, however, is the same as the original novel – in Victorian England.
This is hugely contrasted in the 2006 film, where the whole film is set in
modern America in Hollywood and Los Angeles. This is intended to help bring the
film and its concepts to a modern audience, making it easier to understand and
associate to Americans, many of whom will never have been to England.
Key Scene Comparisons
Now, as the final part of this comparative post, I am going
to look at four key scenes from the two films and analyse them: the exposition
at the beginning of the film, the initial on-screen transformation of Jekyll
into Hyde, the murders via beating (of Sir Carew in the 1920 film and of the
security guard in the 2006 film) and the eventual death of Jekyll. These I hope
will demonstrate to you, if you have not seen the films themselves, what they
are like and how they are different to each other and also different to Robert
Louis Stevenson’s original novel.
The Exposition
So, let’s begin with the exposition at
the beginning of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
To set up the story, the film opens with some introductory credits – albeit very
grainy and blurry ones. The picture quality and clarity is, putting it bluntly,
terrible; scaling up the images to our level of definition now makes them quite
distorted and maybe even more difficult to comfortably watch. The image often
flickers and sometimes even blacks out momentarily until the next frame plays –
this is obviously an indication of the poor level of filming technology
available back then, and yet, it still does not hinder the actual plot of the
film or the level of enjoyment. Now, rather than introducing all of the
characters at once, interlude caption cards feature, introducing the characters
individually when they first appear on-screen. This tradition continues
throughout the whole film, with caption cards featuring throughout to help supplement
the acting and explain the events unfolding. Due to the nature of the film
(being a silent movie) these are included to try and help those who have not
read the book to still understand what is happening.
As each character is introduced, as well, the film aims to
make them very distinctive by leaving the focus on them for a period. The
black-and-white visuals can often make it much harder for any audience, not
just a modern one, to tell the actors and actresses apart. As such, the
exposition is quite prolonged – the main concepts of the film (i.e. the idea
that your personality could be split, the presence of Hyde etc.) do not feature
for almost twenty minutes. Instead, this time is spent establishing the characters
and their individual standings in the fictional society being shown. All the
time, the soundtrack of the film (traditional-sounding orchestral music,
seemingly on a loop until a significant event occurs, where it climaxes and/or
changes) is playing, creating a relaxed atmosphere in contrast to the
developing horrifying events within the film itself.
The 2006 remake shares only one element with the exposition
of the 1920 film: the introductory titles. The titles in this film, however, are
much more complex, appearing over clips playing in the background and using
fancy visual affects created by the editors and producer. Unlike in the 1920
film, the titles here introduce all of the actors at once by name, but still in
order of appearance and, where several actors appear at the same point of the
film, importance. The exposition in the 2006 rendition is, on the whole, much
more complex to understand anyway – it is not immediately obvious what the
point of the opening clips are, and a lot of attention must be paid to all of
the details to truly understand what is going on and who is who since the names
shown at the beginning are not clearly linked to a particular actor. It is
confusing as well because it is not even Jekyll whom we see first – it is Hyde,
savagely attacking a young girl and leaving her very much dead and very much
covered in blood. From here, Jekyll is introduced a short time later in his
laboratory, looking at a news article on his computer. The very presence of the
computer is another indicator of how much technology has advanced; reading
newspaper articles online has only become this popular over the last ten years
or so, and this film therefore easily reflects this fact.
I’ll embarrass myself here and say that, watching the film
for the first time, I spent around ten minutes believing one of the laboratory
assistants (Poole – the butler in the 1920 film) was actually Jekyll, and that Jekyll
was instead the assistant of his. Things could therefore have been a lot
clearer had more thought been put into it by the director, as I feel that many
may be confused initially as to what is happening and why it is relevant to the
plot. A final thing to mention about the exposition in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is that it is much
shorter – the film gets to the point faster, and the idea of Jekyll’s
experience and experimentations as a doctor are clearly shown. This helps
viewers and audiences as a collective, if like me, to ease their confusion and
begin to enjoy the actual story more.
The Initial Transformation of Jekyll into Hyde
Of course the initial transformation of Jekyll into Hyde in each film has to be examined – this is the most iconic scene in the entire novel and certainly the most iconic in any and every stage, film or TV adaptation to ever be made. It’s therefore no different here in these two versions of the film.
To shake things up a bit, rather than starting by looking at Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I’m going to look at The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde first. This film was incredibly creative (and also incredibly stupid, in my opinion) when it came to the first transformations of Jekyll into Hyde and Hyde into mutation Hyde. “Hang on, two transformations?” you might be thinking – and yes, there are two. Apparently one of the changes which Buechler made when making the film was to invent a ‘third stage’ to the transformation of Jekyll into Hyde. I’ll go into more depth shortly.
As mentioned before, the initial ‘initial’ transformation is induced by Jekyll injecting himself with a hypodermic needle. The transformation then occurs – Jekyll’s hair instantly grows longer, he increases in size, and his facial features contort and stretch to form a new face which is much more gruesome and ugly to look at. The idea in the novel is that this face is too ‘deformed’ and ‘repulsive’ so look at – and you certainly get this feel in this film, despite the poorly-done make-up and prosthetics. The downside here, though, more than anything else, is that Hyde still looks too ‘human’ to be truly feared in his ‘neutral’ form. Though disgusting and thoroughly disagreeable, he still looks as if he could have gained that face naturally if/when born. Obviously he (Hyde) looks nothing like Jekyll’s (Tony Todd’s) normal face, but it’s still disappointing. Really, this appearance only gets good when the special effects arrive later in the film when the transformation fluctuates between Jekyll and Hyde as the two sides to his personality battle with each other.
Now then... the first transformation into this second ‘form’ of Hyde. Oh, this made me mad – and it’ll probably make you mad, too, as much as it’ll make you laugh – like I also did. Quite simply, the background of it is this; Jekyll has been medically experimenting on apes, using their DNA and genetic information (etc) to further the treatment that he has invented for serious heart conditions. This DNA is found in the serum which he injects into himself, and considering the metamorphic properties that it possesses, he is not only transformed into the ‘middle’ Hyde – but also an angry, cannibalistic, sexually perverted giant ape. Yep, you heard me. He basically transforms into a giant gorilla in the end which rips people apart with its teeth and hands. This is, as you can imagine, a horrid mockery of the original story – it takes the entire mystery and horror of it away, and the humanity behind Hyde’s despicable deeds away. I could even go so far as to say that the entire point of the transformation at all is lost with this, though that could just be me being overly harsh and critical. The actual first sight of this is, as said earlier, at the very beginning of the film. The first time the transformation is completed on-screen, however, is quite late in the film when it is reaching the final climax, roughly around an hour and fifteen minutes in – Hyde is on a rampage, trying to escape the police hunting for him and Jekyll’s efforts to get rid of him.
Let’s return to the actual good film, shall we? Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1920 has its first on-screen transformation of Jekyll following his meal with Sir George Carew, who tells him that you cannot hope to get rid of ‘evil’ desires by shutting them off – you must give into them every so often. This prompts Jekyll to experiment and thus create the elixir which, as a consequence, brings the hideous Hyde into existence. This transformation takes place in Jekyll’s laboratory
almost immediately after he completes the elixir – after a few moments of
pondering (and most likely worrying, too) he picks up the vial and then drinks
it whole. This scene is incidentally where some of the most advanced effects used
in the film are showcased – the layering of the two clips over each other, for
example: one of Jekyll’s face and the other, in the background, showing his
stance when holding the vial. This effect is later repeated as a transition during the transformation, when Jekyll’s
fingers age and elongate to become Hyde’s. Another special effect is shown when
the convulsions start – it does not begin immediately (infact the first few
moments of the transformation relied in John Barrymore’s ability to contort his
face), but part of the way through, where a combination of prosthetics and
effects supports Barrymore’s changed physiology.
This scene in the 1920 film (which you can watch here if you wish) almost
entirely mirrors that in the book, whereas the 2006 film completely changes the
appearance and horror of the transformation. I imagine this is one of those
moments that ultimately made the 1920 film a great success and the 2006 film
less so – though you’d have to watch the scenes for yourself and make your own
judgement.
Murders via Beating
Surprisingly, there is
one scene in both films which is almost identical, and equally well-done. The
scene I am referring to (as you are no doubt able to tell from the subtitle
above) is the ‘murder by beating’. In Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the unfortunate victim is Sir George Carew – in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,
it is the security guard of Jekyll’s laboratory and work building. In both
films, Hyde attacks the victim and viciously throws them to the ground. When
they are down and unable to get back up, they are clubbed to death using a walking
cane and left in a pool of their own blood. This is exactly the same in both
films, though the victims are different – which quite shocked me, as I had at
first thought that the murder of Donna Carew in the 2006 film had been the ‘murder
by beating’ scene. Then I was surprised by the arrival of the scene with the
security guard, and thus this comparison was sorted immediately.
The only thing that I would mention here is a related
contextual factor – censorship. In the 1920 film, gore and blood and on-screen
violence is kept to an absolute minimum. Despite the descriptions in Stevenson’s
novel, the consequences are not fully shown due to the restrictions on the film
industry and even more prevalently, the media. This limited the screen
appearance of the murder, as well – the actor playing Carew, Brandon Hurst, is
mostly out of shot and the focus is on Barrymore. The 2006 film is blatantly
different to an absolutely horrifying degree. Like I said before, the amount of
blood and gore showcased is enough to make your stomach turn and to make you
want to turn the film off and never resume watching it. The sheer amount of
fake blood that was created purely for the purposes of this film is horrifying,
and you get to see every last pint of it splattered throughout the film.
(Remember as well that the crimes committed by Hyde aren’t limited to just
murder in the 2006 film, as well – he rapes, assaults, blackmails and deceives
as well.)
The Death of Jekyll
The very final point I am going to make is with regard to
Jekyll’s death in each of the films, where there are again both similarities
and differences. In both cases, his death is as a result of suicide; he kills
himself in order to stop the antics of Hyde, and restore peace to the world
that he has left behind.
The Strange Case of
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde captures one of the most common methods of suicide
to exist in modern society – jumping from a building and dying as a result of
the impact of hitting the ground. The explanation in the film is that for Hyde
to die and not be able to recover from the injuries, the trauma must be both
extremely great and also extremely damaging. Jekyll sees the way to achieve
this as falling from a block building backwards – and we hear his final line, “it
was for my soul”, just before death occurs. This is quite an emotive scene and
it makes you feel sad for him – that he had to die, when all he was trying to
do was help the world and also solve his own heart problems. Was it all too
much to ask, really? Poor Jekyll.
The suicide method in Dr.
Jekyll and Mr Hyde is rather antique in comparison to the method used in
the 2006 film. Jekyll here takes poison in his laboratory to kill himself, poison which he stored
away in a ring he had stolen and that was rumoured to be a ‘death ring’ that a
woman once used many years ago to the same end. This result had been
foreshadowed throughout the film, even just by Jekyll’s acquisition of it, but
also by his continuous wearing of it when considering the reputation it had as
an instrument of death. This makes for an almost cyclical plot structure - Hyde both starts and ends in Jekyll's laboratory. The sympathy is again found in the 1920 film, but this
time for both Jekyll and Millicent,
his would-be wife; Jekyll was again only trying to do what he thought was right
and also experience the things that he felt he never could due to his
reputation, and Millicent was devoted to him and was worried throughout that
something was going wrong and that they wouldn't be able to marry. A truly
terrifying story resolved by a truly tragic death.
This therefore concludes my comparison of the two films – Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of 1920 and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of
2006. I hope that it has been both informative and enjoyable to read, and I
would highly recommend that you should watch both films – the 1920 edition more
so than the 2006 one.
Thank you for reading, and please comment if you wish to!
- This piece of writing is for Unit 26 of Edexcel level 3 BTEC Media (Film Studies).
- Bibliography of references/my reading to be able to write this post: here.
