Great piece on the BFI website listing the 10 Greatest Silent Horror Films of all time…
The list includes the great John Barrymore taking a tilt at the dual roles of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde in 1920. The BFI piece, penned by Pamela Hutchinson, made us want to run out and see the movie immediately…
The famous Shakespearean John Barrymore shoulders the dual roles of man and monster in this hugely popular adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson novella. Fellow stage thespian Brandon Hurst plays Jekyll’s leering colleague Dr Carew, while vamp Nita Naldi is the dance-hall darling who brings out his inner Hyde. And all the while the intertitles ramp up the tension, they are also casting a moral burden out to the audience: “In each of us, two natures are at war – the good and the evil. All our lives the fight goes on between them, and one of them must conquer. But in our own hands lies the power to choose.”
Barrymore’s own hands, extended by gruesome, gnarled fingers, are a tribute to Famous Players-Lasky’s makeup department, but there’s far more to this than gore and shocks. The final scenes capitalise on a new character inserted by a previous stage adaptation, Jekyll’s fiancée Millicent, to add a little heartbreak to the horror.
Read the full piece at the BFI website HERE.
Entertainment Magazine
