Of Human Bondage

Pierluigi Puccini

The electrifying, larger than life persona of Bette Davis and her big swollen eyes are enough to captivate Leslie Howard's poor but well meaning sap, and film lovers like myself too. A compelling melodrama about unrequited love, obsession, excess of candidness, and punishment.

pjjrfan

That scene where Davis's character explodes on Howard's character is intense as dated as this movie seems now that scene alone makes this movie worthwhile. That kind of emotion doesn't have a era that's as real a performance as any I have seen.

msmichel

Davis famously rebelled against Jack Warner to do this film for another studio and successfully reinvented herself as a dramatic actress in doing so. She is fabulously vulgar here fully capturing the W. Somerset Maugham creation in a larger than life performance. Howard is quite striking as well in a part that seems tailor fit.

mjgildea

Heavy on all the things I dislike about movies from the 30s (hollowness, overdramaticism and slow pacing), Of Human Bondage is alright but not fantastic. The story is kind of a trainwreck (if only I could've popped into the screen and choked Leslie Howard) and watching an adorable Bette Davis turn into a ghoul was a beautiful bummer.

Gia de Almeida

While Cromwell oversimplified and underdeveloped one of my favourite novels of all time and made it quite a common melodrama, I must say the casting was absolutely perfect. Bette Davis is exactly as I pictured Mildred and the same can be said about Leslie Howard as Phillip. They carry the movie and make watching it worthwhile with their outstanding and compelling performances.

Neither/Nor

In those exchanges of viewing, viewer, and viewed, a discourse of gaze and tension that the narrative can hardly accommodate.

BUSHRA

even though i'm frustrated that my favorite book (like other versions of it) reduce the story to an ill-fated and mismatched romance, i have to say that bette davis' impeccable performance proves why she should have won the oscar for that year and why i'm giving it five stars. her scenes were frightfully sincere and i think the complete embodiment of what maugham envisioned for mildred.

Ryan Christopher Coleman

i cant lie... Bette shocked me. This movie came out the year the Hays production code was established, making the non-stop venom that spews from Bette's mouth that much more impressive. Mildred truly represents the modern girl: flagrantly crude, disdainful of monogamy, bored with children, suspicious of club-feet...