THE TESTAMENT OF DR. CORDELIER Movie Review

Testament in Evil
Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier

Jean Renoir's strange and disturbing experimental fantasy, freely adapted from Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, is the tale of a physician (played brilliantly by the great Jean-Louis Barrault of Children of Paradise) who, transformed by his own hand into a murderous lunatic, stalks the streets and dark alleys of an unsuspecting Paris. Originally conceived as a television play, Renoir combined his own bold concepts of mise-en-scène with standard TV production techniques, using multiple cameras to record action in a scene from different angles simultaneously. The result is a strangely poetic—and intimate—horror film, which suggests a kind of demented variation on the themes of the director's Boudu Saved from Drowning. This time, however, the unanticipated interloper's anarchic impulses result in behavior considerably more antisocial than seducing the maid. It's a weird and claustrophobic little film, a vessel that can barely contain the startlingly awesome gracefulness of Barrault's electrifying, deeply scary performance.

NEXT STOP … Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932), Boudu Saved from Drowning, The Nutty Professor (1963)

1959 95m/C FR Jean-Louis Barrault, Michel Vitold, Teddy Billis, Jean Topart, Micheline Gary; D: Jean Renoir; W: Jean Renoir; C: Georges Leclerc; M: Joseph Kosma. VHS FCT