Leslie Howard

Of Human Bondage

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Mildred (Bette Davis)

Of Human Bondage is the film to point to whenever some marketing guy is wanging on about “brand”. In it, Bette Davis demonstrates as clearly as can be done that it’s product – in the movies the role and performance – that’s critical. Get the product right and the brand takes care of itself. In doing it so brilliantly, Davis transformed her career. This was her breakthrough, in a part that most of her peers turned down – not on-brand enough for them. Davis lobbied for it and forced Warner Bros to lend her out to RKO to play it. It not only made her a star but whipped up talk out of … Read more

Pygmalion

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The professor teaches Eliza to speak

Pygmalion was the name of a mythological sculptor who made a statue so beautiful that he begged the gods to bring it to life. Which they did. He called it Galatea. The myth has been worked and reworked over the millennia and still has purchase – Trading Places is a version of the basic idea, so is Damien Chazelle’s breakthrough film Whiplash. In all the best updates there’s a conversation going on in the subtext about appropriate behaviour. When does tough love become abuse? When should the sculptor accept that “his” creation now has a life of its own? It’s all here in this film version from 1938, an adaptation of George Bernard … Read more