The Testament of Dr Cordelier

Jean Renoir was one of the first great directors to make a film using television methods. The shooting of this updated free adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde took around ten days at the Radio-Télévision Française studios. The use of multiple cameras gives the film the fluid, rough-edged spontaneous appeal of a live TV play. The switch between the cheap-looking studio interiors and the streets of Paris produces an appropriate sense of displacement and schism. Jean-Louis Barrault is extraordinary as the jaunty, twitching, shaggy, prancing, bestial Monsieur Opale, the evil alter ego of the silver-haired, dignified and respectable Dr Cordelier. Shot in 1959, the film had to wait at least two years for a release.