Of Human Bondage (film)

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Of Human Bondage
Bette Davis and Leslie Howard
Directed by	John Cromwell
Produced by	Pandro S. Berman
Written by	Novel: W. Somerset Maugham Screenplay: Lester Cohen
Starring	Leslie Howard Bette Davis Frances Dee
Music by	Max Steiner
Cinematography	Henry W. Gerrard
Editing by	William Morgan
Distributed by	RKO Radio Pictures
Release date(s)	June 28, 1934
Running time	83 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
IMDb profile

Of Human Bondage is a 1934 film, the first film adaptation of the 1915 novel of the same name by the British author W. Somerset Maugham.

1 Background
2 Plot
3 Production Information
4 DVD
5 Footnotes
6 External links

[edit] Background

The film, about a crippled doctor's destructive passion for a coarse waitress, was advertised with the tagline on one of its posters: "The Love That Lifted a Man to Paradise...and Hurled Him Back to Earth Again." The film was remade in 1946 with Eleanor Parker and Paul Henreid, and again in 1964 with Kim Novak and Laurence Harvey. This film is mostly known because Davis' star-making performance was passed over for a Best Actress Oscar nomination, although she was an unofficial write-in candidate. The next year, she was compensated with a Best Actress Academy Award for her performance in Dangerous (1935).

The film was released through RKO Studios and directed by John Cromwell.

[edit] Plot

Of Human Bondage tells the story of sensitive, club-footed artist Philip Carey (Leslie Howard), an Englishman who has been studying painting in Paris for four years. His art teacher tells him that his work lacks promise, so he returns to London to take up studies to become a medical doctor. His moodiness and chronic self-doubt makes it difficult for him to keep up in his schoolwork, however.

In England, he falls passionately in love with a vulgar, illiterate tearoom waitress named Mildred Rogers (Davis). He is smitten with her, even though she is disdainful of his club-foot and his obvious interest. Although he is attracted to the anemic and pale-faced woman, she is manipulative and cruel toward him when he asks her out. Her constant response to his romantic invitations is "I don't mind", an expression so disinterested that it infuriates him - which only causes her to use it all the more. His daydreams about her (her image appears over an illustration in his medical school anatomy textbook, and a skeleton in the classroom is transformed into Mildred) cause him to be distracted from his studies, and he fails his medical examinations.

When he proposes to her, she declines, telling him that she will instead be marrying a loutish salesman named Emil Miller (Alan Hale). The self-centered Mildred vindictively berates Philip with nasty insults for becoming romantically-interested in her.

As the shrewish Mildred in Of Human Bondage (1934), Davis was acclaimed for her performance.

Philip begins to forget Mildred when he falls in love with Norah (Kay Johnson), an attractive and considerate romance writer (working under a male pseudonym). She slowly cures him of his painful addiction to Mildred. But just when it appears that Philip is finding happiness, Mildred returns, pregnant and claiming that Emil has abandoned her.

Philip provides an apartment for her, arranges to take care of her financially, and breaks off his relationship with Norah. Norah and Philip admit how bondages exist between people (Philip was bound to Mildred, as Norah was to Philip, and as Mildred was to Miller).

His intention is to marry Mildred after her child is born. But a bored and restless Mildred is an uninterested mother, and gives up the baby's care to a nurse.

At a dinner party celebrating their engagement, one of Philip's medical student friends, Harry Griffiths (Reginald Denny), flirts with Mildred, who somewhat reciprocates. After Philip confronts Mildred, she runs off with Griffiths for Paris. A second time, Philip again finds some comfort in his studies, and with another woman named Sally Athelny (Frances Dee), the tender-hearted daughter of one of his elderly patients (Reginald Owen) in a charity hospital. The Athelny family is caring and affectionate, and they take Philip into their home.

Once again, Mildred returns with her baby, this time expressing remorse for deserting him. Philip cannot resist rescuing her and helping her to recover from another failed relationship. Things take a turn for the worse when Mildred moves in, spitefully wrecks his apartment (with his paintings and books) and burns the securities/bonds he was given by an uncle to finance his tuition. The Athelnys take Philip in when he is forced to quit medical school and loses his job. He takes a job with Sally's father as a window dresser, after a successful operation to fix his club foot.

Later, Philip meets up with Mildred, now sick, destitute, and working as a prostitute. Mildred's baby has died, and she has become distraught and sick with locomotor ataxia (a form of neurosyphili). Before he can visit her again, she dies in a hospital charity ward from advanced stages of syphilis. With Mildred's death, Philip is finally freed of his obsession, and he makes plans to marry Sally.

[edit] Production Information

The actress Irene Dunne was originally slated for the film, but director John Cromwell had seen Bette Davis in several Warner Brothers films, and so he persuaded RKO to secure her services. It took six months to work a deal to get Warner Brothers to loan Davis. After signing for the part, Davis studied cockney accents, particularly by hiring an English maid for her home.

Davis recounted in her autobiography of feeling ostracized by the mainly British cast, which apparently resented an American being cast for the part. After seeing her performance, however, her costar Leslie Howard recommitted to matching her on screen.

During production, Howard suffered from tonsillitis, and after a day of filming sometimes had to report to a hospital for care. Because of the limitations of time and cast member availability, Cromwell used a revolving stage to have sets designed so that when one scene was finished, the stage was turned and a new set appeared before his stationary cameras.

To skirt trouble with the Hays Code governing film content, Mildred's terminal ailment was changed from syphilis to tuberculosis.

Many critics at the time felt Davis would be nominated for an Academy Award for the critically well-received film, but she was not, though "write-in" efforts were made on her behalf. Davis won the Oscar the following year for the film Dangerous.