The silent family… Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920), HippFest at Home with Neil Brand

Catherine: I’m sure we’ve seen this… (we had)

David: How long is it exactly?

Beth: I love it when the playing switches to diegetic.

Paul: Ohh, that’s good, er… what does it mean?

Welcome to another sitting room Saturday evening, as the four of us gather round the TV to watch “one of Dad’s” which is only fair seeing as last night I had to endure Will Ferrell’s The Story of Fire Saga. Lockdown has brought back family viewing for us as we convene following days distributed around the house, working, reading or fighting droids on the PS4. But this was a gathering of a different kind as cinemutophiles from the four corners came together to enjoy a live stream with improvised accompaniment.

One of my biggest disappointment this year was missing the Hippodrome Silent Film Festival which was cancelled just as the lockdown began. The Hipponauts have stayed connected via social media though and after an earlier shared watch-along of Clara Bow’s It, this was the full Monty: a learned introduction from Pamela Hutchinson and the wonderful – properly diegetic – scoring of Neil Brand for one of the classics of the silent era, courtesy of Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray of the 2011 restoration. But this was also another of those “appointments to view” with so many of the silent film community also watching and commenting as the film played; from London, Bristol, Scotland, Europe and the USA… we were all in the room sharing the film just as we do in Festival. Sure, we had to bring our own drinks but this was a night when social distancing became merely a physical construct.

Pam in our living rooms

Lesley O’Hare, Culture and Libraries Manager, Falkirk Communities Trust set things rolling before Pamela of Walthamstow entertained and enlightened on the subjects of the story and the film. She provided everything you want from an introduction, not only explaining how Robert Louis Stephenson came to write The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde but also highlighting the themes of duality in this “timeless tale of weird science and moral absolution.” We played theme spotting throughout the film after this, with Beth and Catherine putting me to shame, as Jekyll’s deal with himself, undermines his soul in ways he did not foresee. Whether you can deal with your inner conflicts by physically isolating them remains a moot point and the addiction to scientific advance, medicated freedom and unlicensed freedom will need to be controlled within the whole man: your desires can’t write cheques your conscience can’t cash.

Any-way… Pam did warn against pop-psychology and taking all this away, this is still one of the finest silent horrors and features an uncanny performance from The Great Profile himself – or, Drew’s Grandad as Beth sees him. John Barrymore had risen through the twin tracks of theatre and cinema and this was one of the roles that got him recognised as a performer in serious roles after being mostly a comic player in his films from 1913 to 1919. Film Daily was not alone in being impressed "… it is the star's picture from the very outset, and it is the star that makes it… “, his performance “… a thing of fine shadows and violent emotions…"

Brandon Hurst talks to John Barrymore about temptation

Directed by John S. Robertson from Clara Beranger’s script based on Thomas Russell Sullivan’s 1887 stage play, filming was on stages constructed in the Amsterdam Opera House on 44th St. Manhattan,  so that Barrymore could carry out his stage duties on Broadway in the evening – no rest for the wicked: that was at least three roles he was playing.

Barrymore’s Henry Jekyll is a visionary doctor who fixes the poor during the day in his “human repair shop” and researches the furthest possibilities of human biology in the evening – more duality. He is romancing Millicent Carew (Martha Mansfield) the daughter of Sir George Carew (Brandon Hurst) a man who has experienced most things in life and uses his wiles to shelter his daughter and to cynically forge his way in the world. He thinks that Jekyll is too good to be true and sets out to tempt him to taste the forbidden fruit of naughty Nita Naldi or Miss Gina, “Italian artist” as she is known here, an exotic dancer in a seedy club, “gentlemen” frequent. Faced with Miss Gina, Jekyll can well see Carew’s point – as could a number of those (men) watching - but he breaks away integrity intact. Sir George tells the Doctor that the easiest way to get rid of a temptation is to give into it and this is one of a number of Wildean moments – a direct quote - in a film that draws on Dorian Grey as well as The Strange Case.

Nita Naldi showing The Great Profile her own

Back in his lab Jekyll muses on the possibilities of having cake and eating it: what if you could isolate the bad from the good in a separate persona? Writing before Freud, Stevenson’s allegory is based on a physical case of split personality. Mr. Edward Hyde makes his initial appearance without the assistance of too much make-up as Barrymore contorts face and body to disturbing effect, quite the most effective physical transition. Hyde goes back to find and debase Miss Gina and his pure malevolence kicking over inconvenient children as well as being generally unpleasant in personal hygiene and deed.

Jekyll has him under control initially and proposes to Millicent in the optimistic assumption that civilised life carries on but the door has been opened and his alter ego keeps on coming back and every time he is worse… so much happens off screen and yet the disturbing truth of these events comes through in Barrymore’s eyes and his snarled distortions.

Those eyes and the story just keep on getting darker and the scene in which Jekyll has a waking nightmare about Hyde transformed into a huge spider sets the tone for an unrelenting conclusion.  The tale is well wrought and overcomes our familiarity whilst Roy F Overbaugh’s cinematography is also to be commended for turning those Manhattan street sets into London after midnight.

Neil Brand showing what music can do to body and mind

Neil Brand’s playing set the controls for the heart of this thriller and was packed with plaintive gothic chords that enriched the atmosphere and deepened the mood. Tonight he channelled classic cinema scoring as well as a thorough understanding of the emotional narrative leading one person, a Mr Jazzy Lemon, to comment that “it’s like Neil is transformed and becomes the music and the music is him…” which raises the question of which piano player actually inspired Stevenson’s story in the first place?! But Neil’s playing was transformative and gave us that extra gateway of human expression through which we all connected just that bit more to the film. Soul music.

In all, simply one of the best nights out/in and our thanks must go to the whole Hippfest team for organising this as well as Neil, Pam, John and Nita. Let’s do this again sometime and next year, I hope that we will all of us be in Scotland.