Laughton dominates in a dry, rather stately adaptation of the romance between the Brownings

Director: Sidney Franklin

Cast: Norma Shearer (Elizabeth Barrett), Fredric March (Robert Browning), Charles Laughton (Edward Moulton-Barrett), Maureen O’Sullivan (Henriette Barrett), Katharine Alexander (Arabel Barrett), Ralph Forbes (Captain Surtees Cook), Marion Clayton (Bella Hadley), Una O’Connor (Wilson), Leo G Carroll (Dr Ford-Waterlow)

The poet Elizabeth Barrett (Norma Shearer) is confined to her bed (she hasn’t stepped out of the room let alone gone downstairs or stood up in years) and in love with fellow poet Robert Browning (Fredric March), a love he returns with all the giddy enthusiasm of a schoolboy. But despite what you might think, that’s not the real drama in The Barretts of Wimpole Street and there are precious few emotional obstacles between these two. The real drama comes from Elizabeth’s relationship with her father, Edward Moulton-Barrett (Charles Laughton), a possessive control-freak with an unhealthy concern for his daughter who he wants to keep locked away so only he can possess her. Can Elizabeth escape her gilded prison?

Adapted from a highly thought-of Broadway hit, and about two of the most famous poets of the nineteenth century, it’s not a surprise Barretts of Wimpole Street was singled out as another perfect vehicle to cement Norma Shearer as the leading actress of her age. Despite her Oscar-nomination here, as is often the case with Shearer, when called upon to do ‘serious drama’, her mannered breathlessness can be a little trying. That quality is present throughout Barretts, her delivery crammed with heightened earnestness and dramatic intensity. But, there is a real commitment, and she gives a decent performance, capturing Elizabeth’s complex feelings towards her father and the fierceness of her determination – even if it’s a performance that always feels like she’s trying too hard to be taken seriously.

You can say much of the same thing about the rest of this, at times very stately, film, which wears its theatrical, single-set roots very heavily. Shot with a safely staid camera, that frames the action with little invention, it can feel slow and artificial. As with so many other films about writers, we also get little sense of what drives them. The only moment we touch on this is the first meeting between Browning and Elizabeth, with March’s Browning bounding around the room apologetically trying to explain his work while distracted with romantic attraction. For Elizabeth herself, other than settling at her desk once with pen in hand – Shearer cocking her head to the left with a wistful stare as she thinks carefully – you could quite easily forget she is a celebrated poet.

What is perhaps refreshing is how uncomplicated the romance element of the story is. There are no doubts at all about the affections, and no sense of compromise or danger that anything (other than her father) will come between them. March actually seems slightly lost on some level with how little there is to play with Browning: other than a giddy enthusiasm and romantic earnestness, he has almost nothing to do and is all but banished from the film’s most dramatic moments. There is an undeniable chemistry between him and Shearer, but so little stakes between them – and Browning remains largely a pleasant cipher – that it’s very hard to really find much interest in their scenes.

But then that’s because the drama is at home, and the ogre dominating the Barrett household. Franklin communicates the dread this figure holds over his children, even subconsciously, from the start: during the opening shots, we are shown repeated close-ups of Shearer grinning as each of her several siblings enter, culminating in a shot of fixed neutrality when her father enters. This domineering monster controls every inch of his children’s life, makes it clear that disobedience (like getting married) will be met by instant disinheritance and banishment from the family home. A home that is run entirely to his whims and personal tastes.

Who better to play this vile bully filled with fear and loneliness, than Charles Laughton? The film had to remove all references to Edward’s potentially incestuous interest in his daughter but, as Laughton so memorably said, the censors couldn’t ‘cut the glint in my eye’. And they felt fine leaving in dark implications that Barrett’s later children were not “born of love”. Laughton’s performance is towering, a ramrod stiff body of frustrated desires, whose instinct when he feels threatened is to lash out with cruel, verbal and physical violence. He thinks nothing of literally twisting the arms of his daughter Henriette (a very good Maureen O’Sullivan) to extract her confession of loving another man, just as he feels free to browbeat her into swearing on the bible to renounce him.

His creepy parental desire – at one point he sits with Elizabeth and earnestly desires her to stay with him, with all the intense longing of a lover – is palpable, his frustrated sexuality clear. There is a great scene where Marion Clayton’s lisping cousin Bella playfully sits on his lap and asks him to kiss her: Laughton grabs the back of her head for a full-on snog, then leaps instantly to his feet as if terrified that she will detect his obvious arousal. At another, he sweeps a tired Elizabeth into his arms like some sort of Rochester to carry her up to her bedroom.

This but scratches the surface of Laughton’s portrayal of suppressed desires. All of them are bottled up in an intense fear and vulnerability that Edward has of being abandoned – Laughton almost trembles with fear at the prospect of any of his children leaving. At great length with Elizabeth, he hammers away at her confidence, a torrent of passive aggressive words stressing her weakness and incapability to survive. It comes from a deep insecurity but, whenever we feel even a moment of sympathy for this psychologically damaged man, he reverts to bullying, shouting and a willingness to commit acts of petty, damaging cruelty.

Laughton’s superb performance (rightly he was immensely put-out not to be Oscar nominated) not only elevates the film (all its most memorable moments feature him) but also draws some of her best work out of Shearer, who raises her game to match him in their confrontation scenes. The drama of these sequences is the heart of a film that otherwise fails to bring much energy, despite some good performances (including Una O’Connor, giving one of her finest maids, full of exasperated, supportive patience). Away from Laughton, the film feels slight and slow. But with him, it’s a portrait of creepy possessiveness and misdirected desire. Even if, of course, no one could say that at the time.