Brookline, MA, September 29, 2009 — The Coolidge Corner
Theatre’s Science on Screen series returns on Monday, October 19 at 7:00 p.m. with a
presentation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde, Victor Fleming’s 1941 adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s
classic Victorian horror tale about a London physician whose scientific
experiments unleash a malevolent and uncontrollable alter ego. The film will be
introduced by MIT professor John Durant and Harvard professor Anne Harrington.
The married pair, both specialists in the history of science, co-taught a course
on science and medicine in Victorian England at London’s Imperial College last
summer.
Screen legend Spencer Tracy stars in the dual title role
in Fleming’s Oscar-nominated film, featuring stunning black-and-white
cinematography. In 1887 London, Dr. Henry Jekyll is a prominent,
socially upstanding physician whose unorthodox theories alarm his older, more
conservative colleagues and the father of the woman he loves. Jekyll believes
that each man has two selves, one good and one evil, and that these two selves,
“so close as to be chained together in the soul,” can be separated through
science, freeing the good so that it can triumph and allowing the bad to
“destroy itself in its own degradation.” Toiling away in his lab, he develops a
drug which transforms him into the cruel, violent and remorseless Edward Hyde.
Initially, Jekyll is able to dispense of Hyde whenever he chooses. But as he
repeatedly takes the potion, the ruthless Hyde begins to dominate, until he can
no longer be contained. Lana Turner co-stars as Dr. Hyde’s loving, forgiving,
fiancée and Ingrid Bergman as a luckless barmaid pursued and abused by the
brutish Hyde.
Before the film, John Durant and Anne Harrington provide
a fascinating window into some of the scientific and medical theories and
debates of the era in which the fictional Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were born. In
the late 19th century, man’s bestial origins, as revealed by Darwin, and the idea of
degeneration (that humanity could fall downwards on the evolutionary ladder as
easily as it could move upwards), had a strong hold on the Victorian
imagination. It was a time when physicians circulated a theory of a double
brain, when dual personality and other cases of mental illness were often
attributed to brain hemisphere imbalance, and when people anxiously wondered
where the soul lived in relation to the brain.
About Our
Speakers
Anne Harrington is
chair of the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University and a professor in that
department, specializing in the history of psychiatry, neuroscience, and other
mind sciences. She is also visiting professor for medical history at the London
School of Economics, where she co-edits the journal Biosocieties. The author of three books,
Medicine, Mind and the Double
Brain (1987), Reenchanted
Science (1997), and The Cure
Within (2008), she has also produced a range of articles and edited
collections.
John Durant is
director of the MIT Museum, adjunct professor in MIT’s
Science, Technology and Society Program, and executive director of the Cambridge
Science Festival. He was formerly assistant director and head of science
communication at the Science
Museum, London and professor of public understanding of science at
Imperial College, London. Professor Durant has a PhD in History
and Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge. His areas of research have
included the history of evolutionary and behavioral biology, particularly
debates about animal nature and human nature in the late-19th and 20th
centuries.
About Science on
Screen
With Science on Screen, the Coolidge presents a feature
film or documentary with a basis in science, paired with exciting introductions
by notable scientific figures. This monthly series is co-presented by The Museum
of Science, Boston and New Scientist magazine.
Science on Screen programs are $9.75 regular admission;
$7.75 for seniors, students, and Museum of Science members; and free for Coolidge
Corner Theatre members. Tickets are available on-line at www.coolidge.org or at the Coolidge Corner
Theatre box office, located at 290
Harvard Street in Brookline.
For more details, visit www.coolidge.org/science or call
617/734-2500.
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Upcoming Science on Screen
programs:
Nov. 16: BABETTE’S FEAST with professor Guy Crosby,
science editor, Cook’s Illustrated and America’s Test
Kitchen
Dec. 7: AMERICAN BEAUTY, Daniel Gilbert, Harvard social
psychologist and author, Stumbling on
Happiness
Jan. 18: WILD CHILD (speaker
TBD)
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Previous Science on Screen programs
include:
COMA with Robin Cook, MD
AN EVENING WITH RAY
KURZWEIL
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD with psychiatrist Steven
Schlozman, MD
GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER with social psychologist
Mahzarin Banaji
GROUNDHOG DAY with physicist and science historian Peter
Galison
THEREMIN: AN ELECTRONIC ODYSSEY with musical technology
pioneer Tod Machover
RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK with archaeologist Curtis
Runnels
SLEEPER with Brock Reeve, executive director, Harvard
Stem Cell Institute
STAR TREK: THE WRATH OF KAHN with former NASA astronaut
Jeffery Hoffman
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE with evolutionary biologist Marc
Hauser
ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND with psychologist
Daniel Schacter
DONNIE DARKO with Bruce M. Cohen, president emeritus,
McLean Hospital
RICHARD FEYNMAN: NO ORDINARY GENIUS with physicist,
mathematician and business leader Stephen Wolfram
SO MUCH, SO FAST with Jamie Heywood, founder, ALS
Therapy Institute
WINGED MIGRATION with
ornithologist David Allen Sibley
FORBIDDEN PLANET with
artificial intelligence pioneer Rodney
Brooks
VERTIGO with psychiatrist
Catherine Kimble, MD
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY with cognitive
scientist Marvin Minsky
THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN with epidemiologist Alfred
DeMaria
A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME with cosmologist
Alan Guth
JAWS with marine biologist Greg
Skomal
DIAL M FOR MURDER in 3-D with experimental
psychologist Steven Pinker