The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934)
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The Barretts of Wimpole Street Movie Review
The Barretts of Wimpole Street is a 1934 melodrama starring Norma Shearer, Charles Laughton and Fredric March. It’s such a solid, underappreciated picture.
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“I find you as I pictured you,
full of courage and gaiety“
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This is a very interesting real life story of the romance between poets Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett. Her father is a commanding, horrible abuser who won’t let her get married which is the main conflict here. And incest is even applied.
Yes, the movie features such a crazy, very mature story for such an old movie, and although all of its darker moments are only implied, they were still very much present which made the film highly provocative and intriguing.
My main issue with this flick is its pace and approach to telling this otherwise very interesting story. It’s very dull, very slow and overly theatrical to the point that it really grinds that first half to a halt before the story even started.
Yes, it’s really slow and exhausting with way too much dialogue even for me who usually likes a lot of dialogue. But the theatrical approach was obviously influenced by its stage roots and it was inescapable. The second half was much better and much more exciting, though.
The Barretts of Wimpole Street surely has an amazing cast with great stars of its period. One is Norma Shearer who’s so sympathetic here and you really root for her during her terrible predicament. Her performance is very strong here.
The same goes for Fredric March who’s reliably terrific and actually very subdued in his highly likable role. The romance between the two is fantastic and the film surely succeeds as such a wonderful, highly moving romance where you really root for these two.
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As for Charles Laughton, I honestly found him overrated here. That’s not to say that he didn’t do a good job which he obviously did, but this is simply not one of his greatest performances as it was clunky at times and simply the character himself had more potential.
The film was nominated for Best Picture undeservedly so, but Shearer deserved her nomination for Best Actress. It’s interesting how the two actors did not get nominated, but I don’t mind it too much. The movie overall is solid actually, but it could have been much better.
The Barretts of Wimpole Street is unfortunately little talked about nowadays despite its Best Picture nomination, but it surely deserves more love as the real life romance between Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett provides here a very moving story. The film is overly stagy and simply too slow in its first half, but the second half picks up speed and that’s where the film reached its best melodramatic moments. It’s an intriguing story fueled by reliably good performances from its killer cast.
