This film comes highly recommended, definitely one of the highlights of the Gothic season at BFI Southbank. The movie also screens on January 1st and 10th. Details here.
Chicago Reader review:
Directed by Rouben Mamoulian, this 1932 screen adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson classic is a remarkable achievement that deserves to be much better known. Fredric March won a well-deserved Oscar for his performance as the lead, and Miriam Hopkins and Rose Hobart play the two women who match the opposite sides of the hero's nature. The transformations of Jekyll are a notable achievement for March and Mamoulian alike, and the disturbing undercurrents of the story are given their full due (as they weren't in the much inferior 1941 Victor Fleming version with Spencer Tracy, Ingrid Bergman, and Lana Turner). Mamoulian was at his peak in the early 30s, as this film shows.
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Here (and above) is part of the extraordinary opening to Mamoulain's movie.
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