(3 of 3)
Director Rouben Mamoulian added to the story a few Freudian touches. He made Hyde an incarnation of primitive sadism rather than a London bogeyman who was bad without good reason. Fredric March, ably assisted by Miriam Hopkins and Rose Hobart, is magnificent as Hyde, and he gives Jekyll a stilted Victorian elegance which, being a little false, makes Hyde's existence seem more credible. Good shot: Jekyll turning into Hyde as he watches a cat stalk a sparrow.
The Woman from Monte Carlo (Warner), contrived as a vehicle for the U. S. debut of German Lil Dagover, is a jerky little melodrama of continental intrigue and the War. A lady married to a captain in the French navy finds herself aboard her husband's ship and in a cabin which belongs to one of his subordinates. Before her husband discovers her predicament, the ship is torpedoed and lost with all hands, except those essential to the foolish sequences with which the picture ends. In these, the lady's husband is court-martialed. His wife, by confessing her evening in the cabin, secures a pardon for him but compromises herself so that her husband will have no more to do with her. The Woman from Monte Carlo has a few good shots—notably one of the enemy ship's searchlight flashing on the wall of the stateroom in which the lady is sequestered—but it is otherwise slim pickings. Aided by Walter Huston, in a mustache, as the captain, and Warren William, as an admirer, Lil Dagover is distressed by circumstances of plot and dialog like those which have hampered other recent debuts of imported stars. She tries hard but all her part gives her a chance to show is a strong facial resemblance to Lynn Fontanne and a willingness to do better next time.
Born Lilith Witt, in Madiun, Java. Lil Dagover was educated, by European schools and tutors, out of her original ambition to marry a pastry cook. One of Germany's four most celebrated cinemactresses, she is 5 ft. 6 in., 103 lb., single.