The Doctor's Horrible Experiment

A companion to Renoir's other 1959 film, Picnic in the Grass, this film offers a failed solution to the well-ordered, bourgeois society (while the other film offers Renoir's preferred solution). Here, Dr. Cordelier seeks to tamp down his sexual desire in order to better reflect the bourgeois ideal. His scientific experiments to prove the soul only serve to transform him into the physical representation of his soul--a raping and killing madman.... - Full Review

This started off pretty comical but got a bit deep at the end.

A subtly disturbing variation of the Jekyll / Hyde tale, with a moral so subversive it's hard to catch it. Once Renoir reaches Cordelier's "Testament", the Jekyll is revealed to be just as perverse and evil as the Hyde - one hides behind society and decorum, while the other is merely role play. Current events surrounding public figures abusing their position with sexual transgressions made this film timelier, and more sinister, for me.

Foolish melodrama about a mad scientist. Full of counterintuitive action and reaction. A piece of crap anybody could have made.

I have no glue why Renoir made this story. The part of Opale was nicely acted, but the story was lame. Everybody knows the Jekyl/Hyde story. This one did not give anything new for it. The plot was overstretched and the acting was unnecessarily theatrical.

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