A BROWNINGESQUE DRAMA

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 104, 26 January 1935, Page 24

A BROWNINGESQUE DRAMA

The Grand Duel of the Poet

(By

John Storm.)

“Where did Charles Laughton learn all the tilings he knows?” I asked myself after seeing his tremendous performance as Edward Moulton Barrett in the screen adaptation of “The Barretts of Wimpole Street.” This Victorian tyrant, arbiter of tlie destinies of Ills children, has to be made as suffering from an obscure form of dementia to lie believable to us at this distance. Charles Laughton makes him believable, sinister and terrifying. The fact recorded in the biographies, that the father refused to see his daughter after her marriage to Robert, Browning, and refused ever to speak her name again, suggests that this may be the true interpretation of the grim and arid personality. He dominates the whole background of the picture. Nominally he is playing second fiddle to Frederic Mar“h, but the force and power of his performance holds us in awed attention for the first half of the play. The second half is a tacit duel between the two men. And the whole is permeated with very real feeling. One of the most famous love stories of history, in the hands of three famous players, has become supreme drama. Norma Shearer is the captive Elizabeth. Charles Laughton, the jailer, and Fredric March is his Waterloo! Fredrie March makes a wonderful Browning! His gay optimism carries

all before it —ourselves as well as the Barretts. He flings the fine quality of his imagination over us the moment ho appears, and we are suddenly remote from our own age. Under his stately reserve lie is all fire and calm confidence and abounding life. The masterful sweep of his faith carries all before it. He marches into the darkened life of the “dying” Elizabeth, bringing health and freedom. He disjiels the gloom of the fateful house and the death damp in its curtains. We see him disperse Elizabeth’s generous doubts. Lastly, he disposes of the shadow of her tyrant. Then secretly in the presence of “Wilson”, her maid, and Flush, her dog, on the day arranged by the commanding Robert, the two are married.

This with the comedy of the cousin who lisped of her twelve bwidesmaids, and the tragedy of the repressed family of brothers and sisters, is all the story. Una O’Connor as the maid presents a gem of anxious and whimsical attention. And Maureen O’Sullivan as tlie little sister Henrietta plays through some handsome outbreaks of rebellion with Charles Laughton, and he with reprisals in re-ply, but the really superlative work of the three principals needs very little supporting by play. Norma Shearer gives the grand surprise of the three. Who would have supposed the lovely and lovable Norma —usually to be found in super-fashion-able hats, in super-sophisticated comedy—could realise so much of Elizabeth Barrett, that profound pellucid soul! Nevertheless, we are soon lost in the illusion that Norma really is the hopeless invalid, the brave sustainer of a family of terrified grown-up people. She really does suggest something of the high courage and continual charity of the Elizabeth we remember in the letters.

The passages between the lovers have something of a lyric quality unthinkably remote from our own feverish age. For sheer beauty of feeling I think of that scene, where Elizabeth —a miracle of recovery—in the midst of her brothers and sisters shares her joy. In the absence of the father they are all one. Elizabeth.is seated at the piano, and at their request sings "one of your own songs” while they stand adoringly round. Not often, surely, has such a picturesque grouping suggested so sincerely undying kinship and inward peace.