The Barretts of Wimpole Street | |
---|---|
Directed by | Sidney Franklin |
Written by | John Dighton (screenplay) |
Based on | The Barretts of Wimpole Street 1930 play by Rudolf Besier |
Produced by | Sam Zimbalist |
Starring | John Gielgud Jennifer Jones Bill Travers Virginia McKenna |
Cinematography | Freddie Young |
Edited by | Frank Clarke |
Music by | Bronisław Kaper |
Color process | Metrocolor |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
Release date |
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Running time | 105 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Budget | $2.2 million [3] |
Box office | $1.1 million [3] |
The Barretts of Wimpole Street is a 1957 British CinemaScope historical film originating from the United Kingdom; it was a re-make of the earlier 1934 version by the same director, Sidney Franklin. [4] Both films are based on the 1930 play The Barretts of Wimpole Street by Rudolf Besier. The screenplay for the 1957 film is credited to John Dighton, but Franklin used exactly the same script for the second movie as he did for the first. [5] The film, set in the early 19th century, stars Jennifer Jones, John Gielgud, and Bill Travers.
Elizabeth Barrett is the disabled, adult daughter of Edward Moulton-Barrett of Wimpole Street, and she has an intense interest in poetry. However, she lives under the obsessive rule of her father, and his domination severely limits her ability to develop her poetry. Edward in fact shows clear incestuous tendencies toward her and discourages close contact with any males. When the poet Robert Browning enters her life, matters are brought to a head through the intervention of Browning. Edward finds that his control over Elizabeth, and her younger sister Henrietta, is far from complete. [4]
To lend the whole project an air of authenticity, producer Sam Zimbalist moved filming from the 1934 location in the United States to the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire. [6]
Zimbalist wanted only "fine English actors" with the exception of American actress Jennifer Jones. The cast included Bill Travers (Browning) and Virginia McKenna (Henrietta), who were husband and wife in real life. [7]
The production wanted to use as many correct locations as possible, including St Marylebone Parish Church in London. [8]
The film was shot in Metrocolor, using CinemaScope, with an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 on 35mm film. [9] The 4-track stereo sound was supplied by Westrex. [10]
The film was an expensive financial failure. According to MGM records, it earned $330,000 in the U.S. and Canada, and $725,000 in other countries, resulting in a loss of $1,897,000. [3]
Reviews were generally positive, but several critics questioned the decision to remake the film at that time because of its lack of appeal to the rock and roll generation. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times praised the film as "another fine production of the old romance...It does one's heart good to visit once more that dramatic old house on Wimpole Street." [11]
Variety wrote that the film had "a quality look, perfectly picturing the era with almost museum fidelity and reflecting astuteness in virtually all phases except possibly the most important—choice of story for the current, highly competitive market." The review thought that younger viewers would find the film "no more than a quaint, old-fashioned, boy-meets-girl drama, long, talky and often tedious." [12]
Harrison's Reports agreed, calling the film "a quality production" but "extremely slow-moving, and the morals and manners of the period, as presented, may prove much too stately for today's mass audiences." [13] Richard L. Coe of The Washington Post declared the film "an excellent remake of an old favorite" with a "chilling, memorable performance" by Gielgud. [14]
A generally positive review in The New Yorker by John McCarten called the script a "fair and literate adaptation" of the play and Mr. Barrett "an impressive figure" as played by Gielgud, "but I'm afraid I can't say as much for Jennifer Jones, who plays the invalid Elizabeth as if she'd just completed a lively hay ride, or for Bill Travers, whose Browning is unconscionably ebullient." [15] The Monthly Film Bulletin remarked that the decision to remake the film seemed "rather odd," given that to modern viewers it "must appear a little tame and lacking in spirit. In any case, the handling of Rudolf Besier's heavily dramatic play reveals little flair or imagination; the film is far too static and theatrically manoeuvered to maintain the interest throughout its considerable running time." [16]
Although most of the names of the individuals involved are correct in the play and films, by definition motivations of individuals cannot be known. The numerous love letters that Robert and Elizabeth exchanged before their marriage can give readers a great deal of information about this famous courtship in their own words. The correspondence was well underway before they met in person, he having admired the collection Poems that she published in 1844. He opens his first letter to her with "I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett", and a later in that first letter he writes "I do, as I say, love these books with all my heart—and I love you too" (10 January 1845). [17]
Several editions of these letters have been published, starting with one by their son in 1898. Flush by Virginia Woolf, a version of the courtship from the perspective of Elizabeth's dog, is also an imaginative reconstruction, but more closely based on reading the letters. Both the play and film reflect popular concerns at the time, particularly Freudian analysis. Although Edward Barrett's behaviour in disinheriting the children who married seems bizarre, there is no evidence of his being sexually aggressive toward any family members. [18]
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was an English poet of the Victorian era, popular in Britain and the United States during her lifetime and frequently anthologised after her death. Her work received renewed attention following the feminist scholarship of the 1970s and 1980s, and greater recognition of women writers in English.
The Barretts of Wimpole Street is a 1934 American romantic drama film directed by Sidney Franklin based on the 1930 play of the same title by Rudolf Besier. It depicts the real-life romance between poets Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, despite the opposition of her abusive father Edward Moulton-Barrett. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture and Shearer was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. It was written by Ernest Vajda, Claudine West, and Donald Ogden Stewart, from the successful 1930 play The Barretts of Wimpole Street by Rudolf Besier, and starring Katharine Cornell.
Jennifer Jones, also known as Jennifer Jones Simon, was an American actress and mental-health advocate. Over the course of her career that spanned more than five decades, she was nominated for an Academy Award five times, including one win for Best Actress, and a Golden Globe Award win for Best Actress in a Drama.
Robert and Elizabeth is a musical with music by Ron Grainer and book and lyrics by Ronald Millar. The story is based on an unproduced musical titled The Third Kiss by Judge Fred G. Moritt, which in turn was adapted from the play The Barretts of Wimpole Street by Rudolph Besier. It is an operetta-style musical which tells the story of the romance and elopement of poets Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett. The original 1964 London production was a success, starring John Clements as Barrett, June Bronhill as Elizabeth and Keith Michell as Robert. Several revivals have followed.
Katharine Cornell was an American stage actress, writer, theater owner and producer. She was born in Berlin to American parents and raised in Buffalo, New York.
William Brian de Lacy Aherne was an English actor of stage, screen, radio and television, who enjoyed a long and varied career in Britain and the United States.
Dame Virginia Anne McKenna is a British stage and screen actress, author, animal rights activist, and wildlife campaigner. She is best known for the films A Town Like Alice (1956), Carve Her Name with Pride (1958), Born Free (1966), and Ring of Bright Water (1969), as well as her work with the Born Free Foundation.
William Inglis Lindon Travers was a British actor, screenwriter, director and animal rights activist. Before his show business career, he served in the British Army with Gurkha and special forces units.
Ernest Vajda was a Hungarian actor, playwright, and novelist, but is more famous today for his screenplays.
Flush: A Biography, an imaginative biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's cocker spaniel, is a cross-genre blend of fiction and nonfiction by Virginia Woolf published in 1933. Written after the completion of her emotionally draining The Waves, the work returned Woolf to the imaginative consideration of English history that she had begun in Orlando: A Biography, and to which she would return in Between the Acts.
Gwendoline Watford, professionally known after the mid-1950s as Gwen Watford, was an English actress.
Sidney Arnold Franklin was an American film director and producer. Franklin, like William C. deMille, specialized in adapting literary works or Broadway stage plays.
Sam Zimbalist was a Russian-born American film producer and film editor.
Wimpole Street is a street in Marylebone, central London. Located in the City of Westminster, it is associated with private medical practice and medical associations.
Guthrie McClintic was an American theatre director, film director, and producer based in New York.
Moultrie Rowe Kelsall was a Scottish film and television character actor, who began his career in the industry as a radio director and television producer. He also contributed towards architectural conservation.
Margaret Rawlings, Lady Barlow was an English stage actress, born in Osaka, Japan, daughter of the Rev. George William Rawlings and his wife Lilian Rawlings.
Barry K. Barnes was an English film and stage actor. The son of Horatio Nelson Barnes and Anne Mackintosh Barnes, he was born and died in London. He appeared in sixteen films between 1936 and 1947. He played Sir Percy Blakeney in the 1937 film The Return of the Scarlet Pimpernel. His film career was cut short in 1947 due to an undiagnosable illness contracted during the war. He was married to actress Diana Churchill, and worked with his wife on stage during the 1940s and 1950s, taking West End revivals of The Admirable Crichton and On Approval on profitable tours.
The Barretts of Wimpole Street is a 1930 play by the Dutch/English dramatist Rudolf Besier, based on the romance between Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, and her domineering father's unwillingness to allow them to marry. Presented first at the Malvern Festival in August 1930, the play transferred to the West End, where it ran for 528 performances. An American production, produced by and starring Katharine Cornell, opened in 1931 and ran on Broadway for 370 performances. The play has subsequently been revived onstage and adapted for television and the cinema.
Rudolf Wilhelm Besier was a Dutch/English dramatist and translator best known for his play The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1930). He worked with H. G. Wells, Hugh Walpole and May Edginton on dramatisations.