Customer Reviews

Of Human Bondage

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I'm not commenting on the quality of the movie itself, but of the DVD. This DVD has been taken from a worn-out, scratchy, blurry, indistinct print. Other reviewers have commented that there is no discernible difference between VHS and DVD versions; no doubt there has been no movement by any organization or company to locate a better print. Beware of buying this for more than "cheapie, budget"prices. I recommend renting the DVD if you must see the movie; otherwise I'd be patient and wait for the day the movie is "rediscovered" and issued properly so that it can actually be seen and heard.

Yes, this movie is "dated" in a stylistic sense, but so what. Davis and Howard are both so good it doesn't matter. And there is nothing dated about being hopelessly "in bondage" to something or someone - that realization is ultimately what makes the movie so depressing to watch. We can "identify" with Phillip's horrendous treatment at the hands of Mildred because he is obsessed beyond his ability to respond rationally.

The film's most famous line...."You cad!, you dirty swine! I never cared for you not once! I was always makin' a fool of ya! Ya bored me stiff, I hated ya! It made me SICK when I had to let ya kiss me. I only did it because ya begged me, ya hounded me and drove me crazy! And after ya kissed me, I always used to wipe my mouth! WIPE MY MOUTH!"..... is so emotionally charged and devastating one can not help but relate to it at a gut level. The viewer is completely drawn in to Phillip's psyche and his unbearable pain. Davis is simply brilliant in this movie, and she utters this line as convincingly as any in her illustrious career.

A five-star movie which I have to rate 4 because of the poor DVD transfer. No better than my VHS copy. Perhaps not much can be done to improve a movie this old but it appears that no effort was made to do so.

Otherwise a classic in every sense.

The film is brilliant, but the quality of the DVD, particularly the audio, will try the patience of many viewers. Much dialogue is undecipherable.

Excellent but quirky performance from Bette Davis. Leslie Howard is brilliant as the young doctor. A wonderful piece of melodrama that I studied in a film course with Guy Maddin. The movie is divided into a mere four chapters. There are no extra features. The film roughly parallels the last two hundred pages of the novel by Somerset Maugham, with a few significant differences.

The picture quality on this dvd is incredibly poor, with verticle lines and blotches throughout the entire movie. The sound is also poor. I've seen this movie on TCM with much better quality.
It's a good movie but the recording rates a big fat zero.

Rebekah

This film offers excellent portraits of three very different women. Each woman is connected to the clubfoot milquetoast Philip, played exquisitely by Leslie Howard.

Norah (Kay Johnson) is a striking Nordic beauty. She writes Romance novels under a male pseudonym. She is strong, devoted and demonstrates her love for Philip by insisting that focus on his medical studies. This means nothing to Philip because Norah's love takes on mundane characteristics. It isn't full of histrionics or morbid devotion.

Sally (Frances Dee) is quite young and fickle in her way. She seems fascinated with Philip and appears "fond" of him. However, she lacks any passion whatsoever and comes across as merely a mirror image of Philip. She's capable and strong, but ultimately dull. She's not the kind of girl one goes mad over or that causes one to nearly flunk out of medical school because he can't stop obsessing over her.

Those afflictions attack our hero because of Mildred, famously played by Bette Davis and her flickering Cockney accent. Mildred is unencumbered by almost every affectation expected in polite society of the well-bred woman. Mildred is ill-bred, snotty, corrosive, opportunistic and terminally bored. Philip falls into the psycic sewer for her and she gives him nothing for his troubles but frustration and heartbreak. He stupidly loves her and she sees it all to clearly. She sees it as a weakness and despises him for it.

The clubfoot plays an interesting psychological role in this film. There is suggestion that Philip suffers from a clubfoot of the mind--something that has emotionally crippled him and turned him into a pathetic ladies blouse who is quite unmanly in his inability to cast women aside when they no longer serve any purpose.

Overall, it is difficult to recognize love in this film. There is very little affection on screen. Sex is, of course, only implied.

There is a marvellous musical sequence that comes just after one of Mildred's many betrayals. The music fits perfectly with Philip's wan dejection. His depression is expressed with expert clarity, and it is a stunning moment in an thoroughly enjoyable film.

Of Human Bondage, based on the novel by Somerset Maugham, is a powerful but melancholy film that I find strangely mesmerizing. Leslie Howard stars as Philip Carey, an introverted, artistic man who comes to London to study medicine after abandoning his dreams of becoming an artist in Paris. Carey was born with a club foot, and we watch rather mortified as one of his instructors makes him show his foot to the class, revealing the embarrassment that he normally keeps contained on the outside. One day in a nearby café, Carey sees waitress Mildred Rogers (played fabulously by Bette Davis), a rather ill-natured, brazenly taciturn waitress. Her attitude is rather rude and certainly strange and cold, but Carey is immediately fascinated by her. After inexplicably falling in love with Mildred, he succeeds in winning a few dates with her, putting up with her mind games, deception, and seeming lack of humanity. She is frustratingly noncommittal in everything he asks her, replying "I don't mind" to virtually all of his questions and allowing him almost no emotional contact with her at all. He finally resolves to ask her to marry him, but she shocks him by declaring her impending nuptials to another man. Carey's depression grows, and his grades in medical school suffer horribly. In time, he finds a young woman who is a bit matronly but genuinely cares for him. Then Mildred shows up again, pregnant and alone. He takes care of her with money he doesn't really have only to see her leave again with another man. This trend continues throughout the story. Whenever Carey finds happiness within his grasp, Mildred shows up unannounced, and he finds himself powerless to save himself from her debilitating influence on him.

Carey and Mildred are complicated creatures. While Mildred basically comes off as an unfeeling tramp, one can't help but believe that there is something human inside her that is genuinely attracted to Carey and the kind of gentlemanly life he can offer her, but her affections continually prove themselves fickle at best. As for Carey, his fatalistic love for Mildred makes no sense whatsoever, as she never fails to treat him harshly. Other women do come to love him deeply and truly, and Sally, the daughter of one of his patients, seems perfect for him, yet one strongly senses the fact that he can only truly love Mildred. It is really that part of the story and not the tragic life of Mildred herself which makes this movie so poignant and sad.

Of Human Bondage is the movie that made Bette Davis a verifiable star way back in 1934. Her performance is certainly fantastic, but she really provides only a hint of the actress she would become. The fact that her character is so impossibly self-serving and unfeeling makes it hard to identify with or like her (especially when she gets angry), yet Bette Davis makes her an unforgettable character of almost hypnotic fascination. I should say that Leslie Howard is also wonderful in this movie. The kind of aloof passive resistance he showed five years later in Gone With the Wind is a perfect match for the character of Philip Carey. He is almost incapable of standing up to fate, allowing his life to be brought to the point of ruin, both financial and emotional, by a woman who seemingly lives to torment him. I'm always left with a strange feeling after watching this movie, one of strange disquiet and sentimentality. Released in 1934, Of Human Bondage remains a powerful and compelling story of human passion, and Bette Davis' performance is eternally magical.

Those who have read Maughm's OF HUMAN BONDAGE agree that the greatness of the book is focused on the tight yet oddly bound relation of Phillip Carey to Mildred Rogers. The 1934 version intensifies the electricity between the club-footed Phillip (Leslie Howard) and the sluttish Mildred (Bette Davis). It is not immediately apparent that there is a connection between them that cannot be explained away as blind infatuation on Phillip's part or mean-spirited golddigging on Mildred's. Howard plays Phillip as a man who has suffered all his life. He was born with a club foot for which his childhood companions unmercifully ridiculed him. His shy, overly sensitive nature did not permit him to rebound from these rebukes. Instead, he sought refuge in a world of dream-filled books. He knew nothing of the kind of woman that Mildred was when she stepped into his life as a cheap waitress in a cheap restaurant. Miss Davis also plays Mildred as one who has been raked over the coals of mean-spirited men. But in her case, her good looks combined with her low-caste breeding practically guaranteed her unchivalrous treatment by the very kind of those men who either used her or were in turn used by her. Phillip sees in Mildred the passion that he lacks. She sees in him yet another opportunity to lash back at a world that contained only pain for her. Nearly as soon, as Mildred begins dating Phillip, she dates others, and does not even try to hide her infidelities. Alan Hale and Reginald Denny sparkle in the roles of men who show no shame in lowering the already low esteem of Phillip Carey. Most of the film details the same dreary rounds of Mildred's breaking Phillip's heart with unspeakably cruel actions, leaving him for another, getting dumped by those others, and returning contritely to Phillip. Phillip takes her back even after he has found some happiness with other women.Director John Cromwell presents a view of two people who seem radically unlike in everything that ought to count in a relation, yet in her desire to lash out in a rage fueled by no self-esteem and in his desire to accept that abuse because of his own esteem issues, OF HUMAN BONDAGE indelibly portrays the destruction that results when one human forms a bondage with another all for the wrong reasons.

At the time that I'm writing this (January 2002), I see that the repro of the video box has Leslie Howard and some other woman. Are they crazy? ANYONE who looks at "Of Human Bondage", looks at it for Bette Davis!

Here we have the best of the early Blond Bette, before she became the dark haired Bette most people remember her as. What a monster she is, the snippety teahouse waitress who uses and abuses lovesick Leslie Howard. He's a failed artist who takes up medical school only to be derailed by his obsession with this worthless young woman. Although Leslie is handsome and has impeccable manners, he's clubfooted and that really makes him strike out with Bette, who prefers brash salesman Alan Hale. But while she can never care for Leslie, Bette doesn't mind using him and treating him badly whenever time permits. Leslie lets many other opportunities pass him by while he wastes his time and affection on this guttersnipe.

While I must admit that Bette Davis turns in quite a performance in "Of Human Bondage", I must confess that I don't like watching this movie. First, it's an oddly paced OLD movie, lookiing rather like they hadn't quite figured out how to make a satisfactory film yet. Second, I just hate to watch people get used, and this movie is all about that. But if you don't mind seeing a man trampled down, well, then I guess this one's for you!

I purchased this DVD for rental at my store and not only was i pleased with the price and the film transfer but I was thrilled at the amount of extras on this edition. This DVD contains about 20 minutes of "bloopers" from early Warner Brother films. Granted, these "blopers have shown up on "Hollywood Outake" tapes but it was a nice addition to this DVD. The "newsreel" section was interesting as well, even though historically out of context with the film. . This DVD package is one of the best I've seen of older Warner Brothers films. Wouldn't it have been nice if "Jezebel" and "Now Voyager" had such extras? Take notice Warner.

Gary Dennis,

Movie Place, New York City