Of Human Bondage (1934)

OF HUMAN BONDAGE (DVD MOVIE) Product Description

Classic film, mistreated by distributor.

Shame, shame on Alpha Video. This is a truly horrible DVD, and there are no subtitles, so it is next to impossible to decipher a large portion of the dialoge. Bette Davis and Leslie Howard are giving magnetic performances, and deserve much better. If Warner Bros. had control of this property, it would have been released with style. July 1, 2008

Great movie, but loses a star or two due to the shabby DVD

If you take into account when this film was made and that the film medium was still developing its language, you'll likely enjoy "Of Human Bondage". It's well acted and- with its wide array of "let's see what we can do" directorial tricks and flourishes- entertainingly told.

Leslie Howard gives a low-key, effective performance, but it's Bette Davis who really shines. Ms. Davis realized correctly that it should be somewhat confusing to the other characters- and to us- why Leslie Howard's Philip character is so taken with her character, so she grounds her character with a kind of plainness and commonality. But she also realizes that there should be SOMETHING that we as viewers can touch on, so we can at least somewhat understand what is going on inside Philip. So Ms. Davis peppers the plainness of her character with occasional glints of edge, ice, passion, etc., things that a man would notice and be moved by, both in a positive and negative manner. These little glints of uniqueness nicely build to an emotional explosion at the end, so the quiet waitress and schemer doesn't all of a sudden become the bitter harpy who is so memorable at the end. It's a really effective performance, taking into account the future progression of the character right from the beginning.

Now the bad news. This particular DVD of the Bette Davis/Leslie Howard "Of Human Bondage" (the DVD company is called "Westlake") delivers a truly sub-par copy of this historic movie. It's watchable, but- with its faded print and scratchy soundtrack- barely so. There are also several close-ups of written letters in the film, and good luck trying to read them off the faded image.

So that's it in a nutshell. Great movie, lousy DVD. If there's any justice, a better DVD of this movie exists somewhere out there, or at least is on the way. June 12, 2007

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