The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934)
The Barretts of Wimpole Street Photos
Movie Info
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Cast
as Elizabeth Barrett
as Robert Browning
as Edward Moulton Barrett
as Harry Bevan
as Henrietta Barrett
as Arabel Barrett
as Wilson
as Bella Hedley
as Capt. Surtees Cook
as Octavius Barrett
as Charles Barrett
as Charles Barrett
as George Barrett
as George Barrett
as Alfred Barrett
as Henry Barrett
as Septimus Barrett
as Dr. Chambers
as Dr. Ford-Waterlow
as Woman
as Coachman
as Clergyman
as Butler
as Old Man
as Dr. Ford-Waterlow
Critic Reviews for The Barretts of Wimpole Street
All Critics (7) | Top Critics (3) | Fresh (5) | Rotten (2)
As a film it's slow. Very. The first hour is wandering, planting-the-plot stuff that has some difficulty cementing the interest, but in the final stretch it grips and holds.
Sidney Franklin has filmed a drama of beauty, dignity and nobility.
Slow, deliberate, dull.
One of the better-known and more typical of MGM's adaptations of famous stage plays.
Sidney Franklin's first version of the story is stiff and stagy, but it offers good roles for Charles Laughton as the tyrannical and abusive father and Norma Shearer as his invalid poet-daughter.
When not even Charles Laughton, playing a deranged, scarily pious, and pretty obviously incestuous domineering father can save a film, you know you have problems.
Audience Reviews for The Barretts of Wimpole Street
The love story between Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett is legendary, and her 'Sonnets from the Portuguese' contains some of the beautiful love poetry ever written. They were both already established poets when they began corresponding, but she was an invalid, and had doubts and insecurities that he helped overcome with steady, persistent, genuine love. What I had forgotten about their story was how poorly her father behaved towards her and the rest of his children, and this movie really shows us that, in what appears to be a pretty accurate way. Charles Laughton is brilliant as the overbearing, controlling, overprotective, borderline incestuous Mr. Barrett, father of 12, whose wife had passed away, and whose own frustrations in love had led him to forbid his children to marry. He's hard to watch at times, but certainly gives the best performance, and the movie is probably more about his inability to let his children go - indeed, he disinherited each one who married - than it is about the extraordinary love between Robert and Elizabeth, though Frederic March and Norma Shearer do have some tender scenes. I enjoyed watching it, but I suppose that's the reason I didn't give a higher rating. How much better would it have been had they incorporated even more of their relationship, and some of their letters and poetry. The movie would be remade 23 years later by the same director, Sidney Franklin, and would be a great choice to be remade (with script changes) again today.
Super Reviewer
A bit on the melodramatic side but I think this was the time period that created the melodrama. Fredric March is seemingly in every film as the leading man and here he performs his duty and gets his maid.
Super Reviewer
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