John Barrymore IS the special effect, and for a great story.

secondtake

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920)

Don't let the flat beginning to the movie turn you off. Once Barrymore begins taking on both roles (Jekyll and Hyde), with the famous first transformation about 27 minutes into the film, it only gets better and better. The fear within him, his inability to cope, the hiding and general mayhem, and the gradual awakening of the good doctor's friends builds to a terrific second half.

It's silent, yes, but it doesn't need too many intertitles. The lighting and sets are really nice, there is a lot of solid, parallel editing, and the results both in the narrative and in the spatial construction of the film from set to set is complex and sophisticated.

Look for a classic (and simple) use of warm toned and blue toned sections of film, as characters move inside and out (inside is yellowy as if from lamplight). This not only adds mood, it helps you keep track of where you are. The locations are limited--no roaming the streets of old London here--but they work to advance the ideas.

John Barrymore's performance is energetic and fearless. The famous first film appearance of 1920s vamp star Nina Naldi is a landmark, too, though she appears only briefly. The rest of the cast is fine, though in some cases noticeably stiff. Director John S. Robinson is not known for any landmarks besides this one, and even this was not the first adaptation of Stevenson's short novel (that was apparently a 1910 Danish version). But the stakes were raised here, only to be matched and bettered, overall, by the Moumalian version of 1931, an early sound movie with Frederic March in the main role. John Barrymore was a ham, at heart, and this was a role where you didn't have to worry about overdoing the part, so the 1920 version is pretty amazing just to see him act full tilt.

The meaning of the story goes beyond the duality of human nature, and the inability to control pure evil. Toward the beginning, Dr. Jekyll is accused of being a studious bore, and he needed to have a life. The only way to win over temptation was to fall into it, said a friend, and this is the crux of it, really, the idea that you need to follow your own sense of good. Peer pressure never had such fast, awful effects as it did on the tender hearted, experimentally minded young doctor.

score 7/10

secondtake 20 February 2010

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2210431/