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From Hell

From Hell (original title): USA, 2001

Direction: Albert Hughes and Allen Hughes

Producer: Brian Grazer, Ron Howard

Subject: taken by Terry Hayes and Rafael Iglesias from the illustrated novel by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell with the same title

Cast: Johnny Depp (Fred Abberline), Heather Graham (Mary Kelly), Ian Holm (Sir William Gull), Jason Flemyng (John Netley), Robbie Coltrane (Peter Godley), Lesley Sharp (Kate Eddowes), Susan Lynch (Liz Stride).

Social Contrast

In England of the XIXth century, the stories of crimes were very popular. At that time, there was a big contrast between, on one hand, the new, spacious, rich and bright avenues, where the middle class exhibited their social and economical success and, on the other hand, the poor quarters with narrow and small alleys. The high crime rate in those areas was considered to be normal at that time. There was a certain fear for these neighborhoods, where respectable people would never come, as they were seen as the origin for alcoholism and syphilis. The inhabitants were considered as inferior from a moral point of view by the ruling class. This mixture of wretchedness, fear and prejudice exploded with the case of Jack the Ripper, the Whitechapel murderer.

The Story

From August to November 1888, at least five cruel murders happened in the dark alleys of the East End of London. The macabre nature of the murders provoked unprecedented panic in the greatest city of that period. The press published the details, including the sardonic letters received from the murderer or the messages in which the unknown man challenged the police, culminating in his sending half of one of his victims' kidney. He wrote: "I cooked the other half and ate it.". The anger of the people forced the chief of police and the home secretary to retire. But then, suddenly, the crimes stopped and the case was dropped as soon as possible. Nevertheless, ever since then, people have been searching for the identity of this criminal, creating a long list of suspects, from the heir to the throne, Prince Albert, to an impressionist painter, an American billionaire, and even Lewis Carroll himself.

In the Movies

Jack's horror murders have been brought to the movies with varying degrees of success, until the movie we shall now discuss. Mention may be made of The Lodger (John Brahm 1944), inspired by the novel by Marie Adelaide Lowndes with the same title (1913). In A Study in Terror (James Hill, 1966) and in Murder by Decree (Bob Clark, 1978) we find him facing the supreme Victorian hero, Sherlock Holmes. The latter movie is based on the conspiracy theory, which is also behind the illustrated novel From Hell, which is the basis for the script of the movie of the same name. The aim was to represent the story of Jack the Ripper as a vast smokescreen to eliminate attempted blackmail against the Crown by a pregnant prostitute, the lover of the Crown Prince. This theory places the responsibility for the murders with William Gull, the court physician, and this would explain the anatomic expertise evident in the injuries, the absence of blood at the scene of the crime and the murderer's impunity. The crimes were considered to have been committed on palace premises, in a makeshift clinic where the victims could be brought in a carriage, to be cut up and eviscerated in a manner possible only in a dissecting room or an operating theater.

In Literature

If, however, we do not consider Jack the Ripper's crimes as the result of a rational plan, but rather as the acts of a serial killer, the story doubles in interest: it would be the first recorded and documented case of this kind of psychopath. Also, it could be seen as the result of the schizoid morality of the Victorian period, provoking split personalities characterized by a public life and a very different private one. Two years before the crimes, Stevenson had published The Strange Case of Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde and in 1891 Oscar Wilde produced The Portrait of Dorian Gray. A common feature of psychopathic is the capacity to lead a double life, one of which is banal and normal and another which is monstrous. As in Stevenson's novel, Hyde eventually takes control in life whereas Jeckyll - with his charm and courtesy, for these are intelligent personalities who manipulate the feelings of everyone around them - eventually turns into an alibi.

The Profile of the Serial Killer

As far as we know, certain of the characteristics most frequently encountered in serial killers can be observed in the crimes of Jack the Ripper: the explosive character of the attack, the sexual satisfaction associated with the feeling of power over the victim, the pride that his murders give them, which lead them to "play chess" with the police, and also the delusional explanations that the murderer is following orders from "above" which we find in some of them. Sadism is their main perverse motive; they obtain pleasure from the prolonged agony of their victims under torture - as in the morbid reconstruction of certain of Jack the Ripper's crimes - and furthermore, the sexual satisfaction is expressed in this deranged ritual in which genital penetration is replaced by the savage introduction of objects, weapons or instruments: the knife, in the case of Jack the Ripper. Then there is the necrophiliac behavior involving the bodies of their victims, which are depersonalized and desecrated like a butcher's meat chops, certain parts being kept as "trophies", although in the case of Jack the Ripper it seems that this behavior was also accompanied by acts of cannibalism, which have been observed in other cases of multiple murders.

The Movie

Now what can we say about the case of Jack the Ripper in the movie From Hell? In the first place, the scene is very well set in the sordid East End. The story takes place within the context of Victorian society in which the victims - the prostitutes - could not hope to be rescued. Fatalism, the alibi of social immobilism, seals the fate of these excluded women - "those poor women", a phrase often repeated in the film - who can provoke the interest of the public authorities only at the price of their own lives and whose biography explains how their condition as women on their own was sufficient motive to force them into prostitution. Mary, the female lead, observes bitterly, "I wasn't born a whore", and dreams of rebuilding her life in Ireland, but she succeeds in doing this only at the price of Detective Abberline's suicide. He was her only true protector. Death continues to be the price of liberation from that social determinism.

The structure of the police enquiry advances steadily, exposing clearly the conspiracy which required the death of the five prostitutes who knew of the Crown Prince's "sin". All the characters in this corrupt society, indicated by the dim photography, are living a double life, with a public image in contradiction to their private reality. Detective Abberline is not only an unshakeable police officer, he is also ready to know the truth when faced with pressure from his superior, a drug addict, who takes the narcotics commonly used by the intellectuals of the time - opium and absinth (the "green beauty") - which boost his mysterious capacity to have visions on the crimes he investigates. The director uses a different photography and shooting speed in order to highlight those moments of premonitory and clairvoyant hallucination. In particular, one of the final scenes, the one showing Mary happy, with her adopted daughter in her native Ireland, uses this expressive resource.

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