Supervising art director Hans Dreier was charged with designing 35 sets representing streets and interiors of Victorian London, including palatial homes, a medical school, a music hall, Jekyll's fantastic laboratory and the streets of Soho. An architect from Germany, Dreier had worked at UFA during the heyday of the German art films before joining Paramount in 1923. Although his sets for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were authentic to period and country, their German-expressionist quality enhances the aura of mystery. Street settings were closed in for control of lighting, fog, rain and sound recording. Exteriors with gaslights and cobblestoned streets were built in eight separate units to allow for a greater variety of camera angles. Except for a park sequence at Busch Gardens, the entire film was shot on the lot.
Director of photography Karl Struss, ASC was a New Yorker, but no stranger to German expressionism, having won an Oscar for F. W. Murnau's 1927 masterpiece Sunrise (see entry in "Best-Shot Films: 1894-1949" on page 105).
Mamoulian once described his modus operandi to William Stull, ASC in an February 1932 American Cinematographer article titled "Common Sense and Camera Angles." He explained, "After the players are well-rehearsed, I study the action through the camera's viewfinder, or through the recorder's earphones . . . Most frequently, I study it through the camera, for the visual must predominate in a motion picture. It is not only the action that is important, but the way in which the camera sees that action. The cinematographer must light the action to exactly match the mood in which it is played, and must have his camera at exactly the right position matching the dramatic perspective of the scene.
"This is the salient point about camera angles: they must be used to match the dramatic angle of the scene, [and] never for their own sake . . . If they aid the dramatic progress of the picture, they are good, and must be used; if they hinder it, they must not . . .
"But the use of camera angles extends beyond this. It definitely enters the realm of the psychological. It can convey the underlying significance of a scene as nothing else can. Take, for instance, a sequence from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll has just found himself transformed, involuntarily, into Hyde, with no way of returning to his laboratory to secure the chemicals necessary to return him to his real self . . . He is forced to call upon his friend, Dr. Lanyon, who brings the necessary potions to his own house, where Hyde is forced to use them to restore himself, changing back to Jekyll before Lanyon's horrified eyes. In the scenes which follow, Jekyll, physically and emotionally exhausted, pleads with his friend for forgiveness. Double strength was given to these scenes by the camera angles used. Jekyll is crumpled up in a low chair, pleading piteously with his friend; Lanyon sits behind his desk, which is on a dais, as one on the 'Throne of Supreme Judgment.' The angles from which each is photographed subtly heighten this contrast: Jekyll is always photographed from above, looking up into the camera — an abject supplicant. Lanyon is always photographed from below, looking down at the camera — a stern and uncompromising judge. To enhance these visual contrasts, I placed Jekyll in the lowest chair in the studio, and Lanyon (already on a raised platform), on the highest, severest chair in the studio, to which I added three-inch lifts under the legs."
The director also had very definite ideas about camera movement: "The idea that camera movement will give cinematic movement to an otherwise static scene or study, so prevalent among directors and executives, is basically false . . . Unjustified movement is a sign of directorial weakness, not strength . . . Once camera movement is decided upon as dramatically necessary, however, director and cinematographer must cooperate closely in realizing it with the utmost of technical and artistic perfection, for a badly executed move is worse than none at all. Many factors must be considered: speed, angle, and above all, rhythm. The preceding action will inevitably have established a definite dramatic (and often physical) tempo or rhythm; the moving camera scene must follow out the same rhythm, or, in some rare instance, increase it.
"Another point where cinematographer and director must be perfectly agreed is the mood of the photography which best suits the picture . . . Some demand photography that stresses the romantic elements — soft, delicate pictorialism. Others, like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, demand virile, realistic, almost brutal treatment. Of course, realism does not connote any abandonment of the principles of composition or lighting, but it does signify an abrupt departure from more conventional prettiness. To my mind, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde gained force from the fact that both Karl Struss and I were early agreed that realistic, harsh photography was best suited to it. Karl's treatment of it at once heightened the realism of the central characters and threw the character of Mr. Hyde into sharp contrast by ruthlessly exposing its unreality. Let me also pay Mr. Struss a richly deserved tribute for this achievement, for the complete bouleversement of his usual artistic style revealed him to be an artist of the highest caliber." [Struss was famed for soft-image photography achieved with filters and diffusion.]
Camerawork is used to create audience identification with both Jekyll and Hyde. The good doctor is introduced while observing himself in a mirror, preparing for his lecture. Jekyll's journey to the medical college, the welcoming of his colleagues, and his ascent to the dais are shown from his POV, and we see his face again only as he delivers his speech. The first-person camera is also employed when Jekyll first morphs into Mr. Hyde, and during a scene in which he plays Bach's Toccata and Fugue on the organ.
[ continued on page 3 ] © 1999 ASC