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Post by galacticgirrrl on Jan 21, 2024 21:33:20 GMT
Thank you Andrea, for choosing today's fine motion picture.
Yes. Somehow saying it was fun doesn't seem appropriate - but it was. Thank you.
As for Phil, I still don't understand what he saw at that café that I didn't.
My eyes are going downhill so that could be it.
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Post by topbilled on Jan 21, 2024 21:34:22 GMT
Another studio publicity photo:
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Post by galacticgirrrl on Jan 21, 2024 21:35:38 GMT
Another studio publicity photo:
These are fabulous. Thank you so much for taking the time to find & post them. It really helps with getting into the whole feel of making the movies.
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Post by BunnyWhit on Jan 21, 2024 21:37:22 GMT
I believe the baby died. Mildred said it did "last summer" when Howard asked her about it. No? Oh I must have missed that part. What a downer. The baby should have lived.
It would have made sense for it to be a little girl, that Phil and Sally raised and named after Mildred. So in a way she lived on and was always part of Phil's life. Interesting point of view. Perhaps we would want to think that a scenario like this would mean some good could finally come from Mildred. That her child would be raised by decent, loving people thereby giving some meaning to the tragedy that was Mildred. On the other hand, if we keep in mind Spinoza's notion that a man is prey to his emotions and that nothing will set him free from that, at least that tie to Mildred became no longer a possibility, and Philip could hope to learn to live a new life without the lingering thought of Mildred.
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Post by Fading Fast on Jan 21, 2024 21:42:29 GMT
Oh I must have missed that part. What a downer. The baby should have lived.
It would have made sense for it to be a little girl, that Phil and Sally raised and named after Mildred. So in a way she lived on and was always part of Phil's life. Interesting point of view. Perhaps we would want to think that a scenario like this would mean some good could finally come from Mildred. That her child would be raised by decent, loving people thereby giving some meaning to the tragedy that was Mildred. On the other hand, if we keep in mind Spinoza's notion that a man is prey to his emotions and that nothing will set him free from that, at least that tie to Mildred became no longer a possibility, and Philip could hope to learn to live a new life without the lingering thought of Mildred. The baby, of course, is not responsible for his/her parents, but a clean break, as you and Spinoza imply, is what Howard needs. Had I been Howard, after Mildred died, I personally would have salted the earth wherever she had once stood.
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Post by galacticgirrrl on Jan 21, 2024 21:46:56 GMT
Interesting point of view. Perhaps we would want to think that a scenario like this would mean some good could finally come from Mildred. That her child would be raised by decent, loving people thereby giving some meaning to the tragedy that was Mildred. On the other hand, if we keep in mind Spinoza's notion that a man is prey to his emotions and that nothing will set him free from that, at least that tie to Mildred became no longer a possibility, and Philip could hope to learn to live a new life without the lingering thought of Mildred. I personally would have salted the earth wherever she had once stood. ROTFL! There you go again. I will never be allowed back in this place.
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Post by topbilled on Jan 21, 2024 21:51:51 GMT
It's kind of interesting that the three women do not meet, at least not on screen. So Bette Davis has no scenes with Frances Dee or Kay Johnson...Frances Dee and Kay Johnson do not have scenes together either. We mostly see the women in scenes with Leslie Howard.
All of Johnson's scenes had Norah interacting with Phil. All of Dee's scenes had Sally interacting with Phil. And about 95% of Davis' scenes were Mildred interacting with Phil. Except for some brief bits she had with Alan Hale's character and the scene she had by herself when Mildred slashed and burned Phil's artwork, Davis' scenes were mostly with Howard.
There was rarely a moment when Leslie Howard was off-screen. It must be some sort of record his playing a character that appeared in almost every scene in a single movie.
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Post by galacticgirrrl on Jan 21, 2024 21:59:13 GMT
It's kind of interesting that the three women do not meet, at least not on screen. Very interesting. I hadn't thought of that perspective. Just Mildred's photo do they get to meet.
I haven't even had time to pour over the imdb trivia which I love, especially the casting considerations:
Katharine Hepburn, Ann Sheridan, and Irene Dunne all turned down the part of Mildred.
I don't see any listing of who Bette might have battled to have the role.
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Post by topbilled on Jan 21, 2024 22:10:33 GMT
It's kind of interesting that the three women do not meet, at least not on screen. Very interesting. I hadn't thought of that perspective. Just Mildred's photo do they get to meet.
I haven't even had time to pour over the imdb trivia which I love, especially the casting considerations:
Katharine Hepburn, Ann Sheridan, and Irene Dunne all turned down the part of Mildred.
I don't see any listing of who Bette might have battled to have the role. I think you meant Ann Harding instead of Ann Sheridan. Ann Harding would have worked better in the role of Norah.
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Post by galacticgirrrl on Jan 21, 2024 22:17:41 GMT
I just snipped from the imdb - maybe she declined a later version which btw nobody mentioned - are they any good? And any novel readers amongst us - did the movie do the 600 page book justice? Incredible they managed to get it down to under an hour and a half film.
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Post by Fading Fast on Jan 21, 2024 22:24:36 GMT
I just snipped from the imdb - maybe she declined a later version which btw nobody mentioned - are they any good? And any novel readers amongst us - did the movie do the 600 page book justice? Incredible they managed to get it down to under an hour and a half film. I read it in the 1980s and I've seen several movie versions since, so my memory of the book vis-à-vis the movie is worthless on this one. It is also not one I want to reread, not because it isn't a well-written novel, but because it's too depressing for a reread for me.
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Post by Andrea Doria on Jan 22, 2024 12:18:55 GMT
I've been reading it online this morning at The Project Gutenberg site. It is depressing, quite a bit about his miserable childhood, just imagine going to an English boarding school with a bad foot that left him out of all sports.
I just got to the part where he first sees Mildred and the description would match Katherine Hepburn very well, I just can't imagine her ever being able to sound as common as Mildred does:
Then Maugham seems to be saying that it was her insulting manner toward him that started the obsession.
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Post by Fading Fast on Jan 22, 2024 12:35:09 GMT
Of Human Bondage from 1934 with Bette Davis, Leslie Howard, Kay Johnson and Frances Dee
In Of Human Bondage, it is painful, truly painful, to watch how horribly a cockney waitress, played by Bette Davis, treats a deeply in love with her and handicapped (club foot) medical student, played by Leslie Howard, time and time and time again.
Sure, Howard should have snapped out of it, but the heart sometimes won't stop. Davis, though, isn't using her heart when she continues to twist Howard into knots, sometimes for material gain and, sometimes, more cruelly, just for sport.
When you despise, deeply despise, a character who feels real, something powerful is happening on the screen.
Young Bette Davis delivers a tour-de-force performance as the selfish, merciless, yet also, self-destructive girl from the wrong side of the tracks who seemingly tries to ruin sensitive and kind medical student Leslie Howard.
Howard's club foot makes him, in the terminology of the day, a cripple. Shy around women, something clicks in Howard's head and heart when he sees Davis waiting tables.
Her rudeness and indifference to him only fuel his passion. When she dates another man, it drives him crazy. When she laughs in his face or tells him she has no feelings for him - even mocks him for being a "cripple -" he just absorbs the blow and keeps coming back.
When she goes off with another man, he pines for her even when he finally meets a nice woman who genuinely cares for him. Obsession is not rational. And pity the kind woman, played with sensitivity by Kay Johnson, who loves Howard as he can't see past Davis.
It gets worse. When the man she went away with impregnates and abandons Davis, Howard ignores Johnson and supports Davis and her child, despite Davis still not being willing to even date him.
When Davis, then, leaves him for his best friend and, later, returns discarded, he all but bankrupts himself to help her once again.
When she wrecks his apartment and burns the last bonds he has for his medical school tuition (he has to drop out), he seems finally over her, but not really.
Even after all that, and now dating yet another very nice woman, played with wonderful sweetness by Frances Dee, when Davis shows up with tuberculosis, he ignores Dee to come to Davis' aid once more. It's awful, but oddly believable.
Howard, late in, acknowledges his obsession is without reason, but he can't stop. When his club foot is surgically corrected, it seems like it will be his epiphany moment - he's now no longer a "cripple -" but it isn't.
It's hard to play opposite Bette Davis' storm-trooper portrayal of a selfish woman and be noticed, but credit to Howard for creating a memorable version of an obsessed milquetoast medical-school student.
Johnson and Dee, too, manage to carve out impactful characters in small roles in a movie where so much light shines on Davis. The talent pool is deep in this version, which also includes notable performances from Reginald Denny, Reginald Owen and Alan Hale.
Based on a W. Somerset Maugham novel, Of Human Bondage is a brutal portrayal of the destructive power of an unhinged romantic obsession. It is especially bad when the object of that obsession viciously and mercilessly wields that power against its victim.
Yes, there's a lesson here: don't become romantically obsessed with a horrible person. Now, tell that to the person who's obsessed and see how well it works.
N.B. The scene where Howard is trying to study his medical school book, but all he sees is Bette Davis on the pages is, literally, taken right out of Victor Hugo's 1831's novel Hunchback of Notre Dame. Almost everything has an antecedent somewhere.
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Post by Andrea Doria on Jan 22, 2024 18:27:43 GMT
Great review from Fading Fast.
I'm a little bit obsessed with the obsession so I can't quit thinking about it today.
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Post by topbilled on Jan 23, 2024 0:09:39 GMT
Great review from Fading Fast.
I'm a little bit obsessed with the obsession so I can't quit thinking about it today. The excerpts from Maugham's novel that you posted earlier were interesting. They provide more insight than the films do about why he is "smitten" or so obsessed with her.
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