Amazon.com video review:
In the years before Hollywood submitted to the self-imposed censorship
of
the Production Code, filmmakers were free to use adultery, prohibition
drinking, and sexual double
standards to explore the moral complexity of the modern age. Of Human
Bondage, John Cromwell's adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's novel, is
the best-known but perhaps least interesting example in this triple-feature
set. Leslie
Howard stars as the sensitive would-be artist turned medical student who
falls in love with a slutty waitress (Bette Davis, who steals the film with
her cold-hearted manipulations and shrill cockney accent), allowing his
desire for this vicious little tart to control and almost destroy his life.
At a brief 80 minutes, the picture leaves little nourishment between the
narrative peaks but is always well-acted and handsomely staged.
Stalwart
Joel McCrea is the working-class engineer who marries a spoiled society
girl
in Kept Husbands. "Dad, I want him more than anything in the world.
Can't I have him?" pleads kittenish Dorothy Mackaill, but the tug of war
between his work and her play soon tears them apart. Though the plot is
sometimes slow,
sparkling society wit and humorous working-class platitudes (croaked out by
an always entertaining Ned Sparks) add dimension to the familiar story.
Millie, the jewel of the collection, represents everything great
about the pre-code era. Sweetly sexy Helen Twelvetrees is Millie, a
small-town girl turned big-city woman disillusioned with love, but while she
lets
the good times roll she never sacrifices her ideals: "I pay my own way,"
she
insists. When a former beau plots to seduce her 16-year-old daughter,
however, the worn, sad woman becomes an avenging angel, ready to sacrifice
all for the girl. Though highly melodramatic, with adultery and sex to
spare, the film drives ahead with wild abandon, with the dynamic Millie
centering the drama. --Sean Axmaker
Amazon.com video review:
The interior life of a natural-born introvert is a tricky thing to convey in any story medium, but perhaps nowhere more than in feature films. Fortunately for this 1934 version of Of Human Bondage (the first of three), the introverted young doctor at the center of the story is played by Leslie Howard, who makes a slack spirit and puppet-of-destiny ennui look like a GQ ad from the age of Romanticism. Howard's character, well liked by peers and facing a promising future, becomes a slave to self-destructive impulse when he grows obsessed with a mercurial, promiscuous waitress (Bette Davis). She stands him up, she lets him down, she sleeps around--basically doing anything she can think of to humiliate the plaintive, puppyish Howard. The good doctor's prospects soon sink... and then sink again and again every time she reappears, usually in dire circumstances, after prolonged absences. Much of Howard's performance borders on monotony, but how many ways can an actor show what it's like to lean against desks and ponder the enigma of himself? At least he looks classy while doing so. Meanwhile, Davis's electric performance, one of her best, gives director John Cromwell's slow pacing a shot in the arm. The supporting cast is very good: Alan Hale, Frances Dee, and Cromwell's then-wife, Kay Johnson, do a fine job helping to fill in the silences. Adapted from the novel by W. Somerset Maugham. --Tom Keogh
