Of Human Bondage

A sensitive, club-footed man (Leslie Howard) can’t escape the promiscuous, lecherous woman (Bette Davis) he loves.

Of Human Bondage opens on Leslie Howard as he’s told that he has no chance of becoming a successful artist. Discouraged, he abandons his dream and enters medical school. A little later, he meets a cockney waitress played by Bette Davis. Though she’s clearly toying with him, he falls for her, sacrificing his future to bail her out of trouble in what becomes a reoccurring cycle throughout the film. It’s a sad, but powerful story with one critical flaw: though it established Davis as a major talent, her performance is utterly charmless.

Thus, watching the film you feel little sympathy for Howard’s character. In fact, as the story unfolds and he tosses away various beautiful, sane, woman in favor of a crazy leech, you actually come to dislike him. While Howard initially comes across as sensitive and vulnerable, he later feels whiney and masochistic. To its credit, the film foreshadowed this early on, with Howard’s character giving up on his lifelong dream after a single man tells him he’s no good, but if Of Human Bondage is really going to be the story of one man’s self-ruin through self-pity then run with it, and don’t try and tack on an artificial, and improbable, happy ending. To think that yet another attractive woman like Frances Dee would be drawn to Howard’s whiny character stretches the film’s credibility to the breaking point.