As a great admirer of Renoir's cinema discovering this TV film came as a surprise and as a revelation of sorts.
My first impression, as the Jeckyll & Hyde tale unfolded was..." Ooops! Monsieur Renoir is uncomfortable not so much with his subject matter...but with modern times." I felt something akin to what I feel when watching late Hitchcock. Something is 'forced'; the Auteur is no longer at ease with the millieu he's visiting. Many scenes are unlikely, as are many plot points. So...just when you think you might give up and write this off as a directorial dud-of-sorts... Renoir plunges us into the REAL interest he feels for the material.
Barrault is stunning from the word 'go' in his double-rôle.
But it is when his 'confession' scene commences (cleverly crafted through flash-backs and a tape-recorder), that the film REALLY takes off. Suddenly Renoir is no longer sloppy, strident, or hardly credible.
Everything comes into sharp psychological focus. We...the spectators...FEEL that Renoir has come to the MEAT of his story..., to the knot that he has (in his maturity as a Master of Cinema) desired to untangle.Renoir is finally 'turned on' by his material!
And as in many film geniuses latter films...this knot is: The DARK side of the human psyche, hiding behind a mask of respectability.
Buñuel has often been there. Kubrick too. And here is Renoir! So... to put it bluntly... Barrault takes the Prize for a truly stunning, revolutionary, playfully 'punkish' rendition of the unrestricted mayhem his Hyde portrays (and he's wonderful as the distinguished but ambiguous Dr. too), whereas Renoir struggles somewhat through certain passages but...delivers the goods in the final third of the film.
It's a 'sleeper', and a companion piece to Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux.
Great Minds Think Alike.
Review of Experiment in Evil
