Despite an active battle with British syntax, (American audiences could not hear the differences anyway) Bette Davis takes center stage as the sly egotistical young woman determined to get everything out of life that she wants, no matter what it costs.
The central theme is the hoary, time honored quest for reciprocity in love -- and the answer, from Maugham that it doesn't happen. I like you, but you like someone else, who likes someone else, and on and on it goes, and the chain never seems to break.
Leslie Howard is powerful in his role as the aggrieved young man and he is painful to watch as his patience, gentlemanly as it is, begins to chip away and wear thin after years and years of mistreatment.
The film rights itself in the end and we have a great Hollywood conclusion, but in the process you realize you have been touched by Davis and Howard. The plot development was deep and you care about what happens to these people (one way or another).
The other actors are above average, and it makes this film stand out as worthy Oscar material.
This is inestimably the classic rendition of W. Somerset Maugham's popular novel.
The central theme is the hoary, time honored quest for reciprocity in love -- and the answer, from Maugham that it doesn't happen. I like you, but you like someone else, who likes someone else, and on and on it goes, and the chain never seems to break.
Leslie Howard is powerful in his role as the aggrieved young man and he is painful to watch as his patience, gentlemanly as it is, begins to chip away and wear thin after years and years of mistreatment.
The film rights itself in the end and we have a great Hollywood conclusion, but in the process you realize you have been touched by Davis and Howard. The plot development was deep and you care about what happens to these people (one way or another).
The other actors are above average, and it makes this film stand out as worthy Oscar material.
This is inestimably the classic rendition of W. Somerset Maugham's popular novel.