Barrymore rose to the occasion with one of the best of his silent performances: his Edward Hyde in particular is a virtually perfect embodiment of what Stevenson wrote way back in the 19th Century. Unlike most of the latex-heavy later iterations of the character, Barrymore’s Hyde isn’t nearly so grotesque and simian; indeed, in his first transformation (a miracle of acting technique – in one long take, the matinee-handsome Jekyll turns into a snarling, hulking monster, and it’s 100% Barrymore’s expressions and a little bit of surreptitiously applied makeup that makes it work), he looks like a normal, everyday human being, only meaner.Be sure to head over there and read the rest!
29 November 2011
JEKYLL AND HYDE: THE EARLY YEARS
Over at Fandor's Keyframe blog, they're doing a week in praise of silent actors, occasioned by the limited release of The Artist. I was commissioned to write a piece on the 1920 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde starring John Barrymore - because silent horror is kind of how I roll - and that piece has gone live today. Here's a sample to whet your appetite:
1 comment:
Just a few rules so that everybody can have fun: ad hominem attacks on the blogger are fair; ad hominem attacks on other commenters will be deleted. And I will absolutely not stand for anything that is, in my judgment, demeaning, insulting or hateful to any gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religion. And though I won't insist on keeping politics out, let's think long and hard before we say anything particularly inflammatory.
Also, sorry about the whole "must be a registered user" thing, but I do deeply hate to get spam, and I refuse to take on the totalitarian mantle of moderating comments, and I am much too lazy to try to migrate over to a better comments system than the one that comes pre-loaded with Blogger.
Good piece on a good film (I liked it more than I'd expected to when I first saw it). I'd only quibble about your point regarding the ghettoisation of the genre in the early sound period. Universal was one of the smaller majors, but it was still a major studio, and its horror films (at least until the cycle puffed out in the mid-30s) were big budget affairs. And it's worth remembering MGM and Paramount were in on the horror game as well (the latter did produce the 1931 Jekyll after all, not to mention Island of Lost Souls). The Poverty Row mobs were there early on too, but I don't think the genre really became their particular province until the 40s.
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