I had a lot of fun watching this, the editing and overall style makes it quite the entertaining 90 minutes and the story touches on some ahead-of-its-time themes of domestic abuse while giving a simple but fun thriller narrative to follow, even though there’s an older adaptation I decided to kick off my experience with the Dr. Jekyll stories here and considering how much fun I just had I’m very happy I did. A couple weeks ago I watched The Best Years of Our Lives, the movie Fredric March won his second Oscar for, and even though I’d say that movie is leagues ahead of this I think March’s first Oscar winning performance here beats out his second. He was great as Jekyll but his acting obviously took a step up when he became Mr. Hyde and I had such a great time watching that, I thought March did very well symbolizing the domestically abusive husband that Hyde represented while also adding his own crazy flair and the outcome is something I’m very glad will go down in cinema history as an award winning performance. I am sad to see that was this movies one win though as, although I’ve certainly not seen enough 1931 films to form a full opinion, this cinematography was absolutely award worthy, I loved the POV shots and all of the other unique composition throughout the movie and the way it looked was only made better by that editing I mentioned earlier. Starting off my movie day with two of the best edited films of the 20th century is crazy but that’s what I’ve done today, earlier I watched Murnau’s Sunrise which is generational in that regard and I got the same endlessly fun experience of watching such an old film using such a unique and ambitious editing style from this movie as well.
I’m not sure what more I could say about it, the story and overall plot won’t wow you but I’m certain the amazing technical experience will, I think next up in my journey with these movies is Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde and if that can capture a similar magic that this did I’m sure to have another great time.
I had a lot of fun watching this, the editing and overall style makes it quite the entertaining 90 minutes and the story touches on some ahead-of-its-time themes of domestic abuse while giving a simple but fun thriller narrative to follow, even though there’s an older adaptation I decided to kick off my experience with the Dr. Jekyll stories here and considering how much fun I just had I’m very happy I did. A couple weeks ago I watched The Best Years of Our Lives, the movie Fredric March won his second Oscar for, and even though I’d say that movie is leagues ahead of this I think March’s first Oscar winning performance here beats out his second. He was great as Jekyll but his acting obviously took a step up when he became Mr. Hyde and I had such a great time watching that, I thought March did very well symbolizing the domestically abusive husband that Hyde represented while also adding his own crazy flair and the outcome is something I’m very glad will go down in cinema history as an award winning performance. I am sad to see that was this movies one win though as, although I’ve certainly not seen enough 1931 films to form a full opinion, this cinematography was absolutely award worthy, I loved the POV shots and all of the other unique composition throughout the movie and the way it looked was only made better by that editing I mentioned earlier. Starting off my movie day with two of the best edited films of the 20th century is crazy but that’s what I’ve done today, earlier I watched Murnau’s Sunrise which is generational in that regard and I got the same endlessly fun experience of watching such an old film using such a unique and ambitious editing style from this movie as well.
I’m not sure what more I could say about it, the story and overall plot won’t wow you but I’m certain the amazing technical experience will, I think next up in my journey with these movies is Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde and if that can capture a similar magic that this did I’m sure to have another great time.
