Of Human Bondage [1934]

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Philip was brought up as a gentleman, and he was expected to become involved in religion and at some point to go into the Church, as his uncle was a vicar, and he grew up under the rules of church in his uncle’s house. But Philip preferred his own way, and rejected religion for art studies, even though excelled academically, and later rejected it for accounting, and finally he found himself in medicine. Philip had even some doubts about these studies, but he never got out of this path. When Philip’s old Parisian friend, Cronshaw, dies, Philip recalls Cronshaw’s comment that the meaning of life can be found in a Persian rug. He muses that life has no inherent pattern, that it is up to each individual to find a pattern and impose it upon life. The main character of the novel, Philip Carey, is partially based on the life of the author, there are many autobiographic facts. Philip at the age of nine lost his parents and lived with his uncle and aunt, who had no children of their own, and had no idea what to do and how to treat a child. Philip was a cripple, he had a clubfoot, and this deformity made him feel uncomfortable and in some way even undesirable during his life, but it did became an obstacle for him to become an intelligent young man with a broad mental outlook. What is really significant in Of Human Bondage is that it touches almost all the complexities of human life: these are upbringing and education issues, place of religion and morality, difficulties in finding an occupation, and the obstacles which are faced when having some inability. One of the last is Philip’s clubfoot, which prevented him to become a military man or a sportsman. Finally, especially prominent is the theme of love, which usually is the reason of all the troubles. The meaning of life always has been a question of all the times, and it might never be answered, but it must not become a reason not to try. Update this section! Higham, Charles, The Life of Bette Davis. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company 1981; ISBN 0-02-551500-4, pp. 66–72

It's a little hard to watch this one, just as it was a little hard to read the novel by W. Somerset Maugham. Leslie Howard plays the sensitive, club-footed young man who falls for a lower-class, vulgar woman who manipulates and exploits him time and time again. Bette Davis plays the woman brilliantly, and for her performance I could have notched up my rating half a star. The movie has one scene worth watching in particular - the one where she viciously rips into him after he tells her that she disgusts him. Her response: One reaction RKO executives never expected to hear at the preview was laughter. After watching the film several times, they felt the Max Steiner score was to blame, and the composer wrote a new one that included a motif for each of the principal characters. [3] A medical student falls prey to a sluttish waitress. Starring Leslie Howard and Bette Davis. Screenplay by Lester Cohen. Based on the novel by W. Somerset Maugham. Directed by John Cromwell. Produced and distributed by RKO. Henreid wrote in his memoirs that he felt the original script "was very well written" but that Goulding rewrote it throughout the shoot. He did not get along with Goulding, disagreeing as to how scenes should be played and taking too many long takes. [4] a b c d e f g Stine, Whitney, and Davis, Bette, Mother Goddam: The Story of the Career of Bette Davis. New York: Hawthorn Books 1974; ISBN 0-8015-5184-6, pp. 41–42, 50–51, 57–63, 68Canham, 1976 p. 74-75: Davis “is matched by the gentlemanly understatement of Howard’s playing, yet he is sufficiently fluid an actor to present Davis from dominating the film as she used to do at Warners with male leads of limited talent such as George Brent and Paul Henreid.” Now, no longer willing to tolerate the brutality of his schoolmasters, Philip goes to Heidelberg to study. It is there, in his close association with two intelligent friends and his immersion in the study of philosophy, that Philip disabuses himself of the notion that there is a God. He finds this revelation liberating. On his return to England, he meets Gertrude, his aunt’s German friend, and with her has his first sexual experience.

While working at a hospital, Philip befriends a family man, Thorpe Athelny, who has lived in Toledo, Spain and is enthusiastically translating the works of St.John of the Cross. Philip invests in mines but is left nearly penniless because of events surrounding the Boer War. Unable to pay his rent, he wanders the streets for several days before the Athelnys take him in and find him a department store job, which he hates. His talent for drawing is discovered and he receives a promotion and a raise in salary, but his time at the store is short-lived.Davis designed her own make-up for the scenes depicting the final stages of Mildred's illness, changed from syphilis to tuberculosis to satisfy the demands of the Hays Code, [9] which, under Joseph Breen, was beginning to expand and rigidly enforce an all-encompassing Production Code. On July 1, 1934, three days after the film was released, the upgraded system of censorship was formally announced. Vieira, Mark A., Sin in Soft Focus: Pre-Code Hollywood. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1999; ISBN 0-8109-4475-8, pg. 175 Maugham brings a lot of issues in his novel concerning every single aspect of human lives. Among these are the dangerous games people are playing, the place of cruelty and compassion, and how people create their own bondages in and their tries to become free. In this novel Maugham shows himself more than a writer; we see how deeply he reaches the psychological and philosophical aspects of human nature. A story of compulsion on the one hand and control on the other, the story still has much resonance today even if it’s dressed up as a bad woman dragging down a good man, although the more traditional positions in such a relationship are reversed here.