I watched this movie last night hoping it would be sad.  And it was, kind of.  All of the elements for sadness were present.  It was a slow, plodding tale of a nice guy with the odds continually stacked against him, having to endure just the worst of days, every day, with no actual relief.  By the end of every scene, I expected him to snap and kill everyone.  He never did.  But I am sorry for getting ahead of myself here.  Oh, also, I plan to spoil the hell out of this whole movie.  I am doing this to SAVE YOU THE TROUBLE. 

This movie is one of those CLASSICS.  I had seen it in snippet form in the various bios of Bette Davis, because I like to learn about things like that, and man, the plot synopsis sounded pretty depressing.

Netflix, take it away, friend:

“One of a number of films based on W. Somerset Maugham’s tragic novel, director John Cromwell’s 1934 version is notable for catapulting Bette Davis to stardom as coarse Cockney waitress Mildred Rogers. When clubfooted Philip Carey (Leslie Howard) — a cerebral but weak-willed young man pursuing a medical degree — becomes obsessed with the heartless Mildred, his passion threatens to destroy his career and any chance for a happy future.”

I mean, sounds like a delicious recipe for a nice watery Weep-Dish Casserole, doesn’t it?  ”Oh no that poor man!  Being thrown to the caprices of this terrible poor woman with a heart of malice and selfishness!  So sad!”  And like.. it was ALMOST that way.  Leslie Howard was a good actor for this.  I did pity him.  I almost connected with him.  But in the end, as with real life instances of similar stories (guys, this is a very universal timeless story) you pretty quickly stop feeling sympathetic to this dope who is letting some broad ruin his life.  It is depressing to watch, but not sad-depressing.  More like… Frustrating-depressing.

However, I also wound up sleeping through about twenty minutes of it somewhere in the middle, so maybe I was unconscious when the Truly Devastating Things happened.  For some reason (try to guess the reason) I did not bother to rewind it to the parts I last remembered.  Circumstances in a film can sure change a lot in a twenty minute span!  Although, not change enough because that guy was still clubfootedly doing backflips for Bette Davis’ undeserving character, just in a slightly different scenario.

I think as far as plots go, it was frustrating to see play out, yes, but I was immediately struck by how often I have seen friends and acquaintances suffer through very similar things.  Here, listen to it and see if you recognize this story from the lives of people you know – or maybe even your own, if you are a sad, sad person.  Don’t feel bad.  It could happen to any of us.  It is just so important to stop it as soon as you can!

Basically the story follows this sweet man, a Good Egg, who happens to have a CLUBFOOT.  He is very sensitive and insecure about this, and feels that he is not worthy of love or affection.   He is so sad, so continually put down, too, so I mean, we can’t just roll our eyes and be like, “this fellow is his own obstacle, he is making his own suffering, needlessly.”  Because, verily, people are dickholes to this guy.  He is all like rich and stuff but his peers are all like

“You are bad at this, and I feel extra sad for you because you sure can’t fall back on your looks, Club Foot.”
“Ha ha what woman would ever want you?”

– not actual quotes

and he is like u__u but very stoic of course because this is set in London and the upper lip was never stiffer than during the early 1900s, I guess.  Well, maybe they were stiffer in the 1800s, actually.  It is just that I personally have never seen such an upper lip that is THAT stiff until when I watched this film.  I never expected I would ever think about British Upper Lips so much.  Help!

Anyway, this movie starts with him failing as a hopeful artist in Paris, I believe.  His instructor is like, “Ach! Himmel! I am not even going to encourage you, mon cherie. To encourage zees would be to lie. For you have no, how we say? ‘Taleent’? These paintings, bellissimo. They are all as DEAD to me!”  And our hero is all, “u___u Very well.”  And he heads back to London to become a doctor.

And the professor instructor doctor is like, “oh here this experimental poor person patient has a club foot, too! Hey Club Foot, tell us about it, you expert. Show your hideous foot to your laughing peers!” And he does slowly and painfully, with an obvious show of near-emotion, and the doctor is like, “GOD you are taking too long, are you stupid too?? STUPID AND CLUBFOOTED?? I’ll tell them dispassionately why you are broken while you sit there awkwardly.  WHERE’S THAT STIFF UPPER LIP?  IS IT BROKEN AS WELL?!”  And the scene fades as he is like u__u again.  And a theme is detected!

He manages to meet and instantly fall for Bette Davis’ character, who is a low class bitchy waitress and I dont know if she just can’t do a Cockney accent or if some of them really sound that horrible, but boy does she lay it on thick.  Also she is a cold-assed bitch.  Very cruel and very unlikable.  However, all these British guys are like falling all over her which I guess must be some cultural thing, judging by what I have observed even in these modern times!  Horrid, manipulative British women always getting away with it because if they don’t they flip the drama switch on and are even more intolerable than before!  I guess Bette Davis really did a convincing job portraying that kind of girl because I definitely wanted to shank her within the first four minutes.

So Bette Davis quickly establishes to those of us with any sense that she is the worst person on earth and continually and brazenly strings guys along in order to get gifts and fun times.  She treats each of the guys like shit and uses them against each other to inspire raging jealousies for her own entertainment.  All of the guys eat it up and consider the men as rivals, all the while considering her to be a sweet innocent rose petal who would never do any of that stuff ON PURPOSE!  Heavens, no!  They must protect her over and over again while she capriciously insults them and is a real Grade A Bastard.

A TALE AS OLD AS TIME, AS I SAID.

 

But the guys don’t have a visible clubfoot, the guys we see this happening to outside of the confines of this film every day.  They just have CLUBHEART.  And possibly clubbrain.

So anyway, like I was telling you about, she sees several men at the same time and is like YA MAKE ME SICK TO LOOK ATCHA, GUV to the main character all the while being just ugh so horrid.  Of course he proposes to her.  And she is all conveniently like, “actually I was going to tell you tonight that I accepted the proposal of another man BYEEEE” and she skips happily out of the restaurant and out of his life and leaves him to be all u___u

That other man doesn’t marry her for some reason so she comes back, crawling in the bitchiest most uppity way imaginable, meets the clubfoot’s friend and immediately begins a torrid affair with him and Clubfoot is all, “DO YOU LOVE HER??” and his friend is all “what no of course not!”  I feel like I am gossiping about people we all know at this point.  HOPE YOU LIKE THE GOSSIP FORMAT I AM PRESENTING HERE!  But like the sad guy confronts her and she is like OH YEAH? COR BLIMEY READ THIS LETTER HE SENT ME WOT – which the letter is classic man lies being all:

“Dearest Baybee, I love you, baybee, I’ll treat you right baybee just you and me baybeeee iluvu iluvu mwah mwah xoxooxoxox ps plz meet me behind your work tonight I got somethin for ya ;D “

And because there was no camaraderie or Bro Code in 1930s England, our hero, defeated, is like u__u

Then I fell asleep.

BUT WHEN I AWOKE!  It seems that it turned out his friend was just using her because he could tell she was obviously easy.  It would have been nice if that friend could have explained that to the sad hero, but let’s be honest, if he did express that, the hero would have been like, “YOU VILLAINOUS BRUTE!  PISTOLS AT DAWN TO DEFEND MY PURE QUEEN OF LOVE!!!”  So maybe that guy did the right thing.

Well, this is when I started realizing that this movie is an accurate depiction of sad insecure Nice Guys making ridiculous life decisions that everyone else is like why on earth are you doing this?  You are being stupid!  But no matter what you say, the guy continues doing what he thinks is the right thing.  Continually catering to some fool woman thinking that it will make her finally love him even though it just inspires women to sneer and hate the weakness and then exploit it because she perceives the man to be so weak that he DESERVES to be ruined.

The main guy is letting her stay with him in his apartment because she had gotten knocked up and was unmarried, of course, like a real trollop.  Nowadays, this happens all the time, but back then in Uptight England Land, this was like the worst thing that could happen to any female.  However, rather than being thankful, she was still demanding and complained constantly.  But something new had been added!  During that year or so that she was sleeping around and making a baby, our man had gotten a girlfriend!

So he was like, “fine you can stay here until you get back on your feet but I have a girlfriend now, so don’t get any ideas.”  Causing everyone else on earth to wonder why he would ever set himself up for such a dumb dramatic fall.

Of course, Bette Davis is instantly like YOU HAVE A GIRLFRIEND?! WHY DONT YOU LOVE ME?! >:O GONNA THROW MYSELF ALL OVER YOU ENDLESSLY but in a surprising move that no one would ever expect, he finally he shoves her away and is like, “Jesus Christ, m’lady, you are repulsive.  No means no!  Get away!”

And then she fucking FLIES OFF THE HANDLE.

 

And then throws a tantrum and tears up all his paintings, burns his money, wrecks the room, takes her baby and LEAVES.  Talk about not taking rejection well!  Hoooo!

The consequences of him taking this harpy in for that week basically amounts to a lot of strife and more betrayal and he has to leave doctor school because he is broke now, and can’t find work because everyone hated crippled people in the 1930s.  Miraculously, however, he did not lose the girlfriend.  And even MORE miraculously, he has realized that Bette Davis is an undesirable piece of shit.

And then in some medical miracle, his professor teacher is like, “Oh no I really liked you :[ Here have an experimental free surgery which will magically make your foot wad into a human-shaped foot.  You are welcome."  So he gets matching normal guy feet, moves in with his girlfriend and her dad, and things start looking up!  AND THEN he gets an inheritance and can get his doctor license!

At around this time, he runs into Bette Davis who is looking flat busted and is clearly a prostitute (you can tell by her eye make up, which is deep shades of Hussy really caked on - again - some things just never change).

She has this nasty cough.

I read on imdb that  she had TB or SYPHILIS in this movie!!  The character.  Not actually Bette Davis.  But the character caught some gross illness and we are all shocked, as an audience, that she is getting some sort of comeuppance!  Oh and she was all like, "uh also my baby died too, last summer."  And our man was like, "good, I'm glad because you are a horrid person and it would have grown up to be as miserable as you are."  I was all like WOAH DUDE!  All hatin on a baby!  It instantly turned into a feelgood film.  A smash hit.

Her rebuttal was something like, "[cough cough cough] kiss me.  Disgusting manipulation using sex as a weapon is all I know [cough cough rattle].”  But he was like, “GOODBYE FOREVER.”

At the end, it is revealed that she died alone, holed up in some apartment. He finds out and shakes his head and marries that sweet cute girlfriend of his.

 

The End

In summary, this movie is mostly annoying and seems to focus entirely on beating him down 98% of the time with almost no time spent on him coming back from it.  EVERYTHING IS MISERABLE THE ENTIRE MOVIEoh wait its cool now nvm.  However.  I watched it, and I meant to review a movie today, so this is the one you get.  It is more maddening than depressing, but I do find a special depression attached to knowing that I am watching a story that is just as frustrating to watch unfold as real life is.