A quintessentially British tale of unrequited love, Of Human Bondage starts off feeling a bit ridiculous and unbelievable before becoming easier and easier to find completely plausible. It’s odd, and may seem paradoxical, but it is easier to accept the blinkered vision of the lead character as he is treated worse and worse by the woman he has fallen in love with.
Leslie Howard plays Philip, a young man who seems destined to let his club foot affect his confidence and self-worth. He is immediately attracted to waitress Mildred (Bette Davis) when he meets her in a tearoom, but the attraction isn’t mutual. Mildred is cold and hostile, although she eventually agrees to date Philip. Things ultimately don’t work out between the pair, but Philip holds out hope that their time may come later. This one notion, this flame he keeps alight, affects Philip throughout the entire duration of Mildred’s life, making him the person she keeps turning to when she experiences yet another downturn in her fortunes.
Based on a novel by W. Somerset Maugham (which I haven’t read, sorry), this is a film that manages to feel both traditional, and a bit creaky in places, and yet also quite modern and depressingly timeless. It will resonate with anyone who has watched a friend get themselves into a bad situation because of who they have fallen in love with, and this has happened to both men and women throughout history.
Adapted for the screen by Lester Cohen, with some uncredited work by Ann Coleman (apparently), and directed by John Cromwell, Of Human Bondage is a brilliant slice of well-presented misery. Viewers first meet Philip when he is being told that he will never amount to anything as an artist, for example, but the death of that dream is followed by a surprisingly easy move into the kind of education that leads to becoming a doctor.
Howard is great in his role, a typical British gentleman from this time (for better or worse), and he manages to say a hell of a lot with the briefest of expressions that occasionally belie his well-chosen words. Davis is the star though, delivering a performance full of cold spite, one that feels as if it is built around the core of every classic Davis performance, and managing to do it with a surprisingly decent cockney accent. Kay Johnson and Frances Dee are both very enjoyable, playing two other women who might make our main character happy, if he could only get Mildred out of his mind, Reginald Denny is a fairly unhelpful friend, and Reginald Owen manages to steal a couple of scenes as an elderly gentleman who is helped by Philip, and is able to do much more than just return the favour.
It might trip too easily from one major moment to the next, and it’s obviously also filtered through the morality of the 1930s, but Of Human Bondage excels throughout, largely thanks to the cast. Mildred may be someone you want to boo and hiss at, like a pantomime villain, but she’s equally someone you can still somehow believe. There’s a harsh truth at the heart of this, one that underlines every scene with a bittersweet authenticity. We might not want to believe it, but there are so many examples in the real world around us.
8/10
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