Of Human Bondage (1964)

(On Cable TV, February 2020) In retrospect, it wasn’t such an idea to watch all three filmed adaptations (1934, 1946 and 1964) of W. Somerset Maugham’s novel Of Human Bondage back-to-back-to-back. Not so much because they all blend together (they all have their own particularities) but because their story is so trite that a triple dose of it can be overdoing it. This third version is, in almost a tautological way, the most modern of them: the camera moves and the staging are self-consciously cinematic as opposed to the quasi-theatrical way the first two movies were directed. The use of deep shadow, more naturalistic sets and less expensive costumes don’t necessarily work in the film’s favour, especially when measured against the first film. While this Of Human Bondage is a bit more daring, story-wise, than its Hays Era predecessor, it does remain curiously stiff and old-fashioned, something that the black-and-white cinematography doesn’t help even at its most visually three-dimensional. While the film’s technique narrowly gives it a second-place finish in the remake trilogy, the narrowness is against the third-place finish for the 1946 version and not the untouchable 1934 one.