the movie concern about philip ( leslie howard ) he a serious but handicap medicine student . he fall fatally in love with a heartless and predatory waitress call mildred ( bette davis ) . she leave him and engage with others ( alan hale and reginald denny ) . meanwhile he be romance with another suitor ( kay johnson and france dee ) but she go back in a mutually destructive affair . easily the best and first of numerous film version of somerset maugham novel . bette davis a the cockney cruel waitress win yet another magnificent interpretation with an alluring and smoulder performance and absolutely hypnotic in her account of the bondage that occur from the beginning to the finale . davis rise the stardom with her performance . her role a tough and crude domineer woman will be repeat several time in posterior act . leslie howard a the essentially good and decent student subtly destroy give an excellent and melancholic performance . he be an awesome actor ( go with the wind ) besides producer and writer and dead in plane crash during wwii . both will play again in ¨petrified forest¨ ( 1936 ) . the atmosphere film be elaborately recreate in the rko ( radio picture inc ) studio be entirely convincing . remade in 1946 by edmund goulding and with eleanor parker and paul henreid while and in 1964 by ken hughes with kim novak and laurence harvey . the motion picture will like to classic cinema buff . rating represent very good but a little bit dated .