The Barretts of Wimpole Street

1934

Biography / Drama / Romance

2
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 70% · 10 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 70% · 250 ratings
IMDb Rating 6.9/10 10 2356 2.4K

london, england abusive father poet biography based on play or musical family relationships

Plot summary

Remarkable poet Elizabeth Barrett is slowly recovering from a crippling illness with the help of her siblings, especially her youngest sister, Henrietta, but feels stifled by the domestic tyranny of her wealthy widowed father. When she meets fellow poet Robert Browning in a romantic first encounter, her heart belongs to him. However, her controlling father has no intention of allowing her out of his sight.

Director

Sidney Franklin Photo
Sidney Franklin

Top cast

Fredric March Photo
Fredric March as Robert Browning
Ian Wolfe Photo
Ian Wolfe as Harry Bevan
Vernon Downing Photo
Vernon Downing as Octavius Barrett
Una O'Connor Photo
Una O'Connor as Wilson
720p.BluRay 1080p.BluRay
1005.55 MB
986*720
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 49 min
Seeds 3
2.02 GB
1480*1080
English 5.1
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 49 min
Seeds 4

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by Paul-250 8 / 10

A Difficult Romance

The beautiful Canadian actress Norma Shearer starred in this tense and unusual love story based on the true-life romance of Elizabeth Barrett and the poet Robert Browning. Charles Laughton's performance as her possessive and pathologically jealous father was one of the finest in his outstanding career. Although incest was the film's unspoken subtext, contemporary sensitivities prevented it from being spelt-out. That was not to deter Laughton who famously remarked that though they could prevent him from speaking of it, they could not censor the glint in his eye! An outstanding film.
Reviewed by nycritic 8 / 10

Embracing Life: The Story of Elisabeth Barrett

Reviewed by trimmerb1234 8 / 10

Magnificent Monster

Charles Laughton was unmatched in larger-than-life monster roles, physical or emotional grotesques. Surrounded by stars, he outshone and certainly upstaged them all. And what a range too? The soft-hearted sentimental Hunchback of Notre Dame, the ultimate aloof aristocratic villain Squire Trelawney in Daphne DuMauriers tale of Cornish smugglers, the overbearing, over-drinking Lancashire patriarch in the comic Hobsons Choice.Nobody matched Laughton, nobody played them half as well. Here,what would otherwise have been a nice family of happy siblings is instead daily terrorised by a bullying obsessive jealous widower.What might have been a pleasant life is made one of stress as their reasonable expectations of a happy life are thwarted by the strange exactions of one man: their father.Lives that could have been pleasant and in the main unexceptional are dominated by him. But it is the eldest daughter who receives most of her father's attention who rather than lose her, instead insists that she is an invalid and must remain bed-ridden.Dramatically, the entire world of this family of 10 is dominated - and animated - by the single figure of this domineering monster played by Laughton. It is, after this, a fairly simple tale of the unalloyed good and brave daughter (played by Hollyood darling Norma Shearer) who rebels and against this tyrant and is able to go on to have a distinguished life with nice young suitor, poet Robert Browning (Frederic March in this for him an unchallenging role. March had elsewhere played one of cinema's most memorable monsters: Mr Hyde). Norma Shearer rebels not only on her own behalf but also for her siblings too so that they can all live normal fulfilled lives. Not just for her own domestic happiness but also for her artistic freedom, against the the tyranny of this lone monster who would crush them all. It was Laughton who admitted that the look that he gave his daughter (Shearer) should have earned the film an X certificate - it conveyed the very mixed and complicated emotions of this very odd Victorian disciplinarian pater familias.
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