化身博士1931

人类对于自己永远存在着认知上的二元悖论。一方面是文明却压抑，另一方面是野蛮却真实。什么才是真实的人类，什么才是真正的自由，怎么也说不好。影片的悲剧在于，灵魂的二重性虽然可以被激发被扼杀，但是肉体的唯一性却无法回避。多希望伴随着一声枪响，倒下了丑陋的hyde，我们英俊的博士可以复活。然而我们都知道，他们其实是一个人，就算不想承认，这个事实却无法改变。

This dichotomous horror cinema progenitor which ripsnortinglydelves into the sordid underside of human psyche, is directed by the Hollywood’s maverick innovatorRouben Mamoulian and made just shy of the scourge of Production Code.

From its unorthodox opening sequences, shot with anovoid vision-bounded subjective angle, immediately viewers realize they are watching something novel, intriguing and challenging the normalcy of our ocular perception of the silver screen. Even appraised in this day and age, Mamoulian’s sleight-of-hand still resoundingly holds court.

In the Victorian London, the respectable Dr. Henry Jekyll (March) concocts a potion which can turn himself into an alter ago of his dark side, Mr. Hyde, whose appearance also changes into a primitive, simian-like reprobate and is immune to any conscience and morality. One of the most extraordinary visual tricks from Mamoulian is the deceptively uninterrupted close-up of Jekyll’s visage morphing into Hyde’s under our direct scrutiny, which he would spill its magic beans decades later. Also, prominent and equally impressive is his implement of montages, in particular during Dr. Jekyll’s first transmogrification, a hallucinogenic concatenation of the extrinsic incentives which tease out a decent man’s darkest facet.

A whey-faced Fredric March wins his first BEST ACTOR Oscar award (shared with Wallace Beery in King Vidor’s THE CHAMP 1931) for buckling down this Janus-faced showcase and rendering it with both ample empathy and pathos, Jekyll’s repeated frustration of consummating with his sweetheart fiancée Muriel (Hobart) works up as the primal trigger of Hyde’s unleashing and persistence, it is rather incisive to link a human’s sexual impulse with his dark side, a motif naturally falls in with Victorian mores and codes of behavior, and looking back, how to lift“sex” from the list of taboos really signifies a big step to understand humanity,

The two actresses serve as trimmings under March’s duopoly, are diametrical in their social statuses, but not so much in their abject thirst of love and blind subjugation to Jekyll’s gentlemanlike front: Miriam Hopkins’ terrorized Ivy Pierson is incredibly harrowing when we all too well really that she is doomed in the cul-de-sac, and Rose Hobart’s ladylike meekness might reflect what one deems as a noble and devoted wife-to-be then (don’t give up your man no matter what), but teeters on the brink of mawkishness quickly seen through a more critical eye. With all the classic oldies now in vogue for revamping and retrofitting,Robert Louis Stevenson’s timeless warhorse could be well infused with a progressive spin (human iniquity is a gold mine to milk) to exhort younger generations, butMamoulian’s ingenuity is nevertheless, substantially nonpareil.

referential point: Fritz Lang’s M (1931, 9.0/10)

我知道管风琴=大反派标配，这是好莱坞传统，但我好像找到了鼻祖？

因为在这个传统出现之前，管风琴代表着宗教信仰，代表神。而在这部电影开头，还能看到管风琴曾经的标签的影子。博士用管风琴弹了一段Ich Ruf Zu Dir Herr Jesu Christ。

只不过被反过来用了，圣咏由基克尔博士弹出来一点都不神圣，还让人后背发凉。最神圣的就是最邪恶的，最干净的就是最脏的。当年的好莱坞导演很有想法啊。

虽然现在类似的梗已经被用烂了，但古早的管风琴反派还挺酷的。