"The world is yours my darling, the moment is mine."
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941) is a remake of the 1931 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and like that film is only loosely related to Robert Louis Stevenson's novel, The Strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
The majority of this film is based on the previous version's screenplay but there are little touches that a keen observer will notice when watched that I really enjoyed, like the Freudian dream sequences that were placed in this film. Little touches like this show that someone was thinking about the film critically and found a cool idea to add that would enhance the themes of the story... now if only the rest of the film had that original thought....
As with most remakes, I wish this film would have tried more to be it's own film. Instead I think it falls short because it's trying too hard to just leech off of the success of the previous version. Like the entire 3rd act is exactly the same as the previous film, which I didn't even like when they did it then!
I was let down by the cast in this film. I got excited seeing Lana Turner, Ingrid Bergman AND Spencer Tracy played the three leads but unfortunately Ingrid was trying to break typecasting and tries to play the down-and-out love of the protagonist and ends up coming off very sweet and innocent (not actually breaking type) and this kind of ruins the difference between her and Lana Turner's character (Dr. Jekyll's fiance) that the previous film had. And I gotta say Spencer Tracy plays a pretty boring Dr. Jekyll, and his Hyde while less crazy overall does achieve some pretty high levels of wickedness, just takes him a while to get there. Humorously supposedly Fredric March sent a telegram to Tracy thanking him for his biggest career boost, as his performance was often salvaged when compared to Tracey's. This is a fine example of the risk you run when remaking something that's still so recent in people's minds.
This film has really great cinematography. And overall I'd say the direction is greatly improved from the previous version and the full soundtrack score really helps to make this version a lot more tolerable than the previous one. Victor Fleming is the director who you will know from his previous two films, The Wizard of Oz (1939) and Gone with the Wind (1939) you wouldn't know from watching this one though, this film has nowhere near the same scale of those previous two but is refreshingly simple and still good comparatively.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941) is more watchable than the 1931 version (which alone probably warrants the remake) but unfortunately I liked the actors better in the previous version. 3.5/5 stars.
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