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Lawyer Joly (Teddy Bilis) sees a grown-up man beating up a little girl
for no reason at all. He rushes to help the girl, and the man diosappears
into a nearby house - that of Joly's good friend Doctor Cordelier
(Jean-Louis Barrault). When he wants to warn his friend Cordelier though,
he learns from Cordelier's servant Desiré (Jean Topart) that the
intruder, called Opale, is a guest and patient of Dr Cordelier, who is
allowed to come and go however he pleases ... which is shocking for Joly,
because Opale was also intalled as Cordelier's sole heir a few days back -
and Joly now thinks, Opale might just be after the inheritance ...
When Joly later has a talk with Cordelier, Cordelier not only denies
that Opale is trying to get his inheritance, he also shields Opale from
possible police investigations against him. But each night it seems, Opale
goes on the prowl again, with each of his crimes being more atrocious.
Finally, Joly manages to persuade Cordelier to pay a visit to their mutual
friend Doctor Séverin (Michel Vitold) ... but before Cordelier can get
there, Séverin is found dead, killed by Opale.
When the police investigates, more and more clues lead to Opale, but
Cordelier still shields Opale and blocks the investigations, and nobody
really understands why. Finally though, Opale is caught red-handed and
pursued to Cordelier's house, where he locks himself in ... but he allows
Joly in to make a confession: In fact, Opale and Doctor Cordelier are one
and the same person, the good Doctor has once seen it necessary to create
a serum to seperate the goodness, the benign traits of man from the bad,
evil traits. But when he tested the serum on himself, it led to unexpected
results ... because after taking the serum, he turned into an evil version
of himself, who goes around hitting children, murdering people and the
like. After the first encounter with his bad self, Opale, Cordelier wanted
to abandon the whole project, but he quickly grew addicted to being bad,
and took the serum again and again in ever higher doses ... and now,
Cordelier/Opale is so addicted to the serum that, to turn him back into
Cordelier, Opale would have to take a lethal dose. Joly tries to prevent
him, insisting that he should pay for his crimes ... but to escape a life
of misery, Opale takes it anyhow, and in death he turns back to Cordelier
...
If you haven't guessed it, Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier is
a thinly disguised version of Rovert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case
of Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde, moved from Victorian London to modern day
(1950's that is) Paris and concentrating on the philosophical (and the
comical) aspects of the story rather than the horrific ones. As a result,
the film isn't much of a horror flick (as director Jean Renoir never was
and never wanted to be a horror director), but it raises some interesting
questions, like who's really the bad guy of the story, Hyde/Opale, who was
left without a conscience after an experiment gone wrong and now doesn't
know any better, or Jekyll/Cordelier, the perfect benign man who can't
stop himself from taking his serum though and in his good-guy-guise goes
as far as to shield his other, evil self..
Now in all, it might not be Jean Renoir's best film, it might not even
be the best Jekyll and Hyde adaptaiton, but it amnages to
shed an interesting new light on an age-old story.
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