Jack, l'Éventreur

"For over 100 years the murders in Whitechapel committed by Jack the Ripper have baffled the World. What you are about to see is a dramatisation of these events. Our story is based on extensive research, including a review of the official files by special permission of the Home Office and interviews with leading criminologists and Scotland Yard officials."

Jack The Ripper is produced out of Euston Films and is directed by David Wickes who also co-wrote it with Derek Marlowe. Released to coincide with the 100 years anniversary of the murders, it stars Michael Caine (Frederick Abberline), Armand Assante (Richard Mansfield), Ray McAnally (Sir William Gull), Lewis Collins (Sgt. George Godley), Ken Bones (Robert James Lees), Susan George (Catherine 'Kate' Eddowes) & Jane Seymour (Emma Prentiss).

Originally released as a TV mini-series in the United Kingdom, Jack The Ripper has long since been available to view as a three hour ten minute movie. Every second of which is worth sitting thru. For his story Wickes uses actual historical characters that were involved in the 1888 hunt for the notorious killer. Drawing heavily from the Masonic/Royal Family conspiracy theory that has been used before in tellings of the story (notably the film Murder By Decree born out of Thomas E. A. Stowell's theory), Wickes boldly proclaimed to be revealing the true identity of the Ripper. Something that unsurprisingly he was forced to recant, but regardless of that, this is a glorious telling, meticulous in detail and providing much food for thought.

In amongst the grizzly murders and the fraught search for the killer by the exasperated police, Wickes' movie fully forms the other issues to hand. Such as the role of the press during this dark time and why was George Lusk leading vigilante's across Whitechapel? The Government and Royal Family aspects are given screen time because that's how high the issue went. The pressure on Abberline from his superiors is told in full, as the murders start to escalate and Abberline runs up against questionable assistance during the investigation, his anger grows. We are with him every step of the way. The prostitutes aren't merely Ripper fodder characters either, we at least meet them, understand them, even seeing the role of the "pimp" in Victorian England. It's good stuff, well researched.

Technically, for a TV movie, its production value is very high. Great sets that bring to life Victorian England (the exteriors were actually shot in Belper, Derbyshire), the costumes catch the eye and the cast are hugely effective. Particularly Caine (throwing himself into the role) and Assante (switching his character's emotional state regularly with consummate ease). We also get the chill factor too, something that's needed in a film of such dark thematics. As the street girls walk alone in dimly lit cobbled streets, the air of unease is palpable. Then a silhouette of the man with the hat, cloak and bag brings a cold shiver down the spine. Witness to the sequences involving the play Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, a nice put in to the plot by the writers, and one that provides genuinely creepy moments. It's a top film that has so much going for it.

There will be other Jack The Ripper film's no doubt, and for sure more books will arrive proclaiming this and that is true. But with this take, if you buy into the theory or not, is probably as good as it gets for detail and execution of the material. 9/10

Atmosphere. I need to start my review with that one word! Jack the Ripper was a made for TV mini series that aired 100 years after the original killing spree in Victorian London in 1888. What made this stand out when I first watched it back in the late 90s on a car-boot sale acquired VHS tape, was the atmosphere of old London portrayed in this film. The script writing was fabulous, and gave the talented actors a chance to shine, and for the drama to play out over the full 3 hours run time. We really get a sense of the era by watching this, and we feel for Caine as Detective Aberline in pursuit of the murderous ripper. The film very cleverly makes Caine's character flawed and deeply troubled by making him an alcoholic, and making us wonder at first if he is up to the job of tracking down this maniac. I adore how there are so many suspects thrown at us, and some of these are written in a way that we think that they are red herrings, or perhaps not? If you haven't already read the countless theories on who Jack the Ripper might be, then the suspect named in this film's conclusion may well surprise you. However, if you do by now know who is who in the ever growing suspect list it won't add anything new or clever to it's conclusions. I might add that the only downside to this film is London's Whitechaple looks way too clean and smog free. Having said that, the sets and locations are all well done.

Well, it's not perfect, but what is? This one is a cut above the others I've seen, in some of which the victims were all "dance hall girls" or whatever. I thought Michael Caine was a good as he usually is, which is to say, pretty good. The other performances were also above average. (I thought Lysette Anthony was Helena Bonham Carter grown inexplicably more mature with the receding years.) Armand Assante does a great job of turning into Mr. Hyde on stage. Jane Seymour is beautiful but takes up screen time that otherwise could be put to better use, granted that three and a half hours constitutes a lot of screen time. A problem, though is that there are too many red herrings, too many dead ends gone into at length, at the expense of more interesting material. Every theory dreamed up by any manque criminologist with a pulp sensibility has been dragged into the story, and some made up that have never before been proposed. (How about: Jack was an alien from outer space?) I'd like to have known more details about the cases -- the sign about the "Juwes" and the bag of "cashous" found by Nichols' body.

On the plus side, the crowded streets of 1888 London were colorfully evoked. The second murder took place in the small scruffy backyard of a tenement, next to a wooden fence, and to judge from the look of the scene the production designer worked directly from contemporary photographs. At least one of the props, a horse-drawn trolley with a Nestle ad, showed up virtually unchanged on Sherlock Holmes' Baker Street in the later Jeremy Brett series. Of course this isn't the REAL city. The London of the time would have been almost repellant as the lingering shots of the dismembered bodies which are mercifully absent from this film. This was industrial-strength capitalism in its most untrammeled form. What was glamorized as London "fog" we would nowadays call "smog" or simply "industrial smoke." In the absence of toilets, Whitechapel would have smelled like an outhouse.

Why did all those women go out alone at night? One reason may be similar to the one than prompts people to live in large coastal cities in California. Oh, I know it's going to happen, but it won't happen to me. Another is that they may not have had much choice in the matter at a point in history with no social security or unemployment or medicare. If a man lost his arm at work, he was fired and was out on the streets. If a woman with no skills and no independent means lost her husband, she was out on the streets too, wearing the signature apron of her trade. For a few minutes unpleasantness in a dark corner she might earn enough for a drink of gin or a flea-ridden bed. Failing that she might find a seat in the lowest of flophouses, where there were no beds at all, just parallel lines of chairs with long ropes strung in front of them for sleeping patrons to lean across. Most of the poor looked like hell. And felt like it too, what with debilitating infectious illnesses and decaying teeth. It wasn't a good time to be broke.

The problem with Ripper stories is that there is no satisfactory narrative conclusion, no neat ending, because the murderer was never discovered, let alone caught. Structurally it's a kind of coitus interruptus. So over the years we've pretended to solve it, using upstairs lodgers or effete royalty. The case file still exists but it's been so pared down over the years, through pilferage, loss, and souvenier hunting, that there are only a few original pages left.

My bet? In the FBI typology he was a disorganized murderer, operating impromptu. As someone said in another comment, he was probably a local nonentity. He probably lived alone and kept to himself. If anyone noticed him at all, they probably thought of him as slightly goofy for talking to himself, believing in magic, or whatever.

Michael Caine is truly brilliant in this outstanding mini-series. Despite the trappings of being a TV production, it transcends it's limitations and delivers a thrilling take on the infamous unsolved Jack the Ripper case.

Outstanding work from al involved.

I haven't seen many ripper movies out there that haven't been made with a fantasy aspect to them, "Time After Time" comes to mind, but this movie actually tells the story of the first serial killer and makes a murder mystery out of it. Depicted through the eyes of Inspector Abberline, played by the wonderful Michael Caine, this movie is actually supposed to be based on the re-opened files of the case in Scotland Yard and the research on them by today's for-most experts in Criminology. Whether that assertation is true or not is up to the viewer, but this movie does end with a fanciful theory and several fine performances by Jane Seymour, Armand Assante and others. The parallels and connections to the novel/play "Dr, Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" are creative, bold, and clever. The sets and scenery of the period are exquisite and actually add to the atmosphere of the movies. The killing recreations thankfully don't have the distaste of slasher films and the overall style reminds me of the Liz Montgomery movie, "The Legend of Lizzie Borden" which also like this movie masterfully created the incidents of an infamous crime in period costume and ended with a new hypothetical theory. Even without closure in either crimes, both cases continue to inspire creative movies.