This is the film that made Bette Davis a star, and it's easy to see why. At a time when no other actress in Hollywood would take a role this gritty, Daivs not only took it on but went way beyond the demands of portraying her unsympathetic character and became something wholly cruel. At the time of its release, Life Magazine wrote she gave "probably the best performance ever recorded on the screen by a U.S. actress." It's really amazing watching her. She transforms into something completely different in every role, but in a different sense than anyone else has done it. For example, look at the recent career of Cate Blanchett: she has convincingly played everyone from Elizabeth I, to Katherine Hepburn to an Indiana Jones villain, and creates full bodied characters out of roles that are meant to be characters in them self. Bette Davis makes every performance into a character. She's known for playing the bitch, but the bitch is different every time.
Also, this film started Davis' tumultuous Oscar ride (receiving 10 nominations and 2 best actress wins over her career, but with many, many snubs in between). Here's a brief summary of what happened from Wikipedia:
Quote:
When Davis was not nominated for an Academy Award for Of Human Bondage, The Hollywood Citizen News questioned the omission and Norma Shearer, herself a nominee, joined a campaign to have Davis nominated. This prompted an announcement from the Academy president, Howard Estabrook, who said that under the circumstances "any voter ... may write on the ballot his or her personal choice for the winners", thus allowing, for the only time in the Academy's history, the consideration of a candidate not officially nominated for an award. Claudette Colbert won the award for It Happened One Night but the uproar led to a change in Academy voting procedures the following year, whereby nominations were determined by votes from all eligible members of a particular branch, rather than by a smaller committee, with results independently tabulated by the accounting firm Price Waterhouse.
Now, onto the film itself. It's more of a short of film than a standard feature length film, which is unfortunate given the subject matter. The "bondage" of obsession that the protagonist (skilfully underplayed by Leslie Howard...whoever he is) experiences is earnestly portrayed but somewhat lost in what sometimes feels like a montage of vignettes rather than a coherent undergoing. The direction noticeably lackluster, and trying to chop down a 1,000+ page novel into just over an hour risks losing a lot. Somehow though, the heart is still there (thanks to Davis and Howard, and a few supporting characters as well). It's a sad story, an introvert held captive by his own emotions at the hands of a callous bitch, too pathetic to ever remove himself from his imprisonment. There is a bit of redemption at the end, but again, it's not the result of anything Howard's character did for himself, but matter at the whim of Davis' character's life.
