Film by Jean Renoir

This film by Jean Renoir (1894-1979), one of the most significant directors in film history, provides the probably best variation of nearly 30 film adaptations of the novella »The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde«. The Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94) created one of the most famous examples of the doppelganger motif in world literature with this novella.

Dr. Cordelier, once a distinguished psychiatrist, has now dedicated himself to his research and is experimenting with a serum which should reveal the true human soul and all of its repressed and hidden sides. He creates a creature which splinters off from its own ego and only heeds its desires and instincts. Jean-Louis Barrault, famous for playing the lead role in Marcel Carné’s drama »Les enfants du paradis« (»Children of paradise«, 1945) is a true tour de force in his performance of the double role of Cordelier/Opale.