Two of the greatest of all Mad Scientists face off in this edition, as in one corner we see David Cronenberg’s 1986 body horror tragedy The Fly:
And in the other we have Rouben Mamoulian’s innovative 1931 classic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde:
There are a lot of definitions of tragedy, and I won’t go into them here. It’s something people argue about, and will probably always argue about. One of the things tragedies all share, whatever your definition, is this: they’re all about people who think they control their own lives, finding out that they don’t. Not all horror is tragic, but all horror is about the blurring or crossing of boundaries, and mad scientist stories are about the deliberate transgression of them.
Both of these films are about scientists who experiment on themselves, which is crucial. There’s a special kind of hubris at work, one that goes beyond even Frankenstein’s conviction that he can create life and, in so doing, become a god himself. Henry Jekyll and Seth Brundle dissolve the boundary between subject and object, between the creator who acts and the thing acted upon. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde makes frequent use of POV shots, and it’s not merely an opportunity to show off a new film technique (although it is that). Jekyll is the modern man: the world he moves through is defined by his observation of it. The intelligent, perceiving individual shapes the world by perceiving it. The protagonists in these films are people for whom nothing, no power, is off limits. Their ability to make and remake the world is so total that they can make and remake themselves.
But there is, of course, a circularity here. Jekyll and Brundle become something like their own fathers; the self-creation necessitates a split between the different parts of the self, even if it is only a split between before and after. The perceptions of an intelligent self can only be reliable if the self is a stable thing. Brundle and Jekyll find out not only that their identities have become unstable, but that they always were. Hyde was always already inside Jekyll, waiting to emerge. Brundle’s boundaries were always porous, waiting to be corrupted. He accurately describes his deterioration as “cancer.” His body is doing what bodies tend to do, given enough time: they break down, and start destroying themselves. Likewise, Jekyll ultimately has to face that Hyde is a worse, more sadistic, more impulsive version of himself, but still, a version.
This is, perhaps surprisingly, one of the more difficult decisions I’ve had to make. The Fly is a masterpiece, one of many that Cronenberg has made. It’s warmer, more directly emotional than much of his work; the love the two leads have for each other is so obvious and so deeply felt that their tragedy becomes almost unbearable. I don’t think Geena Davis and Jeff Goldblum were ever better (give or take an Earth Girls are Easy, obviously).
Frederic March, though – he matches them, easily. Nobody else in his film is quite on his level, but it doesn’t really matter; his performance is good enough to carry the whole thing. His Jekyll is just so likable: kind and funny, impulsive but responsible, generous and warm. He isn’t a classic mad scientist, married above all to discovery, but is instead a genuinely caring physician. The baser parts of him are real, certainly, but the good is real too, and that matters. His ultimately permanent transformation is tragic as well as horrific, because something beautiful, something people loved and needed, was lost.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is also a surprisingly experimental film – it plays a lot with point of view, in a way that helps the story. The technique keeps you inside Jekyll’s head at crucial moments, which means that he stays sympathetic even when he’s being irresponsible. So much of his emotional state is conveyed without dialogue; most of it is in March’s performance, but a lot is in the camera work. It’s a strikingly impressive film for 1931, when sound film was just getting rolling. It’s pre-code, which also means it’s remarkably sexually frank in a way that a film made ten years later couldn’t be.
Cronenberg has my heart, but he’s elsewhere on this list, and he’ll appear again. The Fly is a great, great, film, but Frederic March’s performance alone elevates Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde above it.