Friday, April 4, 2008

The Love That Lifted a Man to Paradise...


...and Hurled Him Back to Earth Again

The man would be Philip Carey (Leslie Howard); a sensitive, club-footed artist who is forced to study medicine after his art work is deemed mediocre in Paris.
The film would be "Of Human Bondage".
In London Philip meets Mildred Rogers (Bette Davis) an illiterate tearoom waitress with whom he becomes infatuated and obsessed.
He sees her in his anatomy books and fails his medical midterm because he can't get her out of his head.
He invites her to the theater and courts her, to which she usually replies "I don't mind" with her heavy Cockney accent. Then one day she announces she will get married to Miller (Alan Hale), an older salesman, and asks Philip to get over her.
He obviously doesn't and throughout the story Mildred will exert a strange power over him that will lead him to forgive her every single time, giving her an apartment while she flirts with his best friend and leading to a tragic conclusion.
Based on W. Somerset Maugham's autobiographical novel and directed by John Cromwell, this is the most famous of the film versions, mostly because of what it wasn't.
In what to this day remains a known anecdote for film buffs and award insiders, the movie, which resulted in unanimous praise for Davis, was not nominated for a single Academy Award.
It was Davis' twenty third film, but considering this was in the studio system era when actors were forced into contract films and ended up starring in up to four films a year (Bette herself had four more pictures released in 1934) we can say that this was her breakthrough.
She'd been working since 1931 and was 25 when "Of Human Bondage" was released. The critics loved her work, mostly because it was a total revelation.
Legend has it that Leslie Howard wasn't so keen on working with the newbie and started the film acting carelessly; later, he would constantly try to up his game in order to catch up with his ferocious costar.
Now it seems unbelievable to think back of a time where Howard's name had top billing and Davis was an unknown. Makes you wonder what the actor would've accomplished if it hadn't been for his untimely death. He apparently was very influential, even giving Bogie his first major role, but that's a story for another occasion.
When Oscar announced its nominations in 1935 the film failed to be nominated in every single category, the biggest upset was of course Best Actress.
Davis would be quoted as saying her career was BM and AM (before Maugham and after Maugham respectively) which is a small example of how big the film was in her life.
After Davis' snub, Hollywood went beserk and for the one and only time in Academy history there was a write-in nominee.
Since the Academy didn't allow this in its rules, official records don't show the nomination, but it happened.
And so did this performance, a tour de force in which her sexiness and vulgarity played side to side, luckily it's pre-Code so the sexuality of the characters is on the surface.
Her Cockney accent is perfect, but the work she does with her mannierisms and eyes is the real wonder here. Somehow she makes Mildred someone so awful and revolting that you can't stand her, but at the same time you understand why Philip takes her back every single time.
In her last scene (a shocking transformation that doesn't happen outside as it does within her) you make up your mind about your feelings toward Mildred and whether they are good or bad, very few performances in history dig so deep under your skin.
It's as if we were bound to her in some way or another.
As every human being is to something or other.

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