|
|
I'd never seen a silent movie in a theater until last night. The Usher Hall in Edinburgh screened this 90-year-old horror to a large, nearly sold-out, audience with live music. It was a digital projection made from a composite print that hadn't been restored. The film was full of nicks and dirt and scratches, but it didn't bother me, it added to atmosphere I guess.
John Barrymore (Drew's granddad) plays Dr. Jekyll, a man who has devoted his life to good. His friends tease him on his purity and encourage him to let his hair down once in a while, perhaps with a hooker or two. Instead of taking this sound advice Jekyll creates a potion that turns him into Mr. Hyde, a monstrous character who is supposed to represent man's inner beast.
The "horror" didn't really have much of an effect on me. Hyde doesn't do anything considerably evil, but I did find him creepy to look at. The performances are all about theater and overacting in the absence of dialogue and the actors did a good job in this regard. The photography and set design was impressive too but rather undermined by the decrepit nature of the composite print.
Though we should be grateful that the film still exists in good enough condition to screen publicly. This was the 3rd screen adaptation of Robert Lewis Stevenson's novella, the first two have been lost and will likely never be seen again.
I guess you could say that they are "Hyding".
score 7/10
CuriosityKilledShawn 31 October 2010
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2332491/ |
|
25-2-2021 05:01:30