This is the role Bette Davis went to war with Warner Brothers to get, and which made her a star. It's Davis in the days of the bleached hairdo; she plays a Cockney waitress who cruelly breaks the inoffensive student (Leslie Howard) who is in love with her. Mildred doesn't care about Philip, but she humiliates him because she has the power and it is in her nature
He is obsessed and would rather have her spite than nothing. It's a psychosexual power game. The adaptation was compromised because of censorship. So, Mildred dies of poverty and TB, while in the book she becomes a sex worker and contracts syphilis. The difficulty of condensing an epic meditative novel into an 82m melodrama would have meant trade-offs anyway. It's still a transgressive film.
Philip is a medical student, but as he falls under Mildred's spell, anatomy begins to seem alien and meaningless. His physical injury (he has a deformed foot) has marked him as a victim and is a symbol of his emotional inferiority. She is inarticulate and ordinary but has a sexual charisma that prevails. There is nothing else quite as extreme as this in thirties cinema, even precode. Her death scene is phenomenal.
Davis is astonishing. Her accent isn't like any you've heard before. She is raw and wild, but this is one of her best performances. Howard is too old, though excellent, but Bette is dominant, as she should be. It's like watching a sadistic, predatory creature torment its victim. It's not a realistic portrayal, it's more than that: it's horrifying and among the great performances of the decade.