When not even Charles Laughton, playing a deranged, scarily pious, and pretty obviously incestuous domineering father can save a film, you know you have problems. This MGM prestige pic, produced by wunderkind Irving Thalberg and starring his wife Norma Shearer, is full of problems, and sadly, the main one is the lead performance by Shearer, who was one of my favorite actresses on the basis of just two or three films I've seen her in. She's simply awful here, horribly out of her depth, somnolent and lifeless. It pained me to watch her feebly gesture her way through the film, because I liked her so much in The Divorcee and Private Lives.

The titular Barretts are Elizabeth Barrett—known to the world with an additional last name that she picks up during this film— her eight siblings, and her horrible father Edward. Elizabeth has been bedridden for several years. In real life, she had a lung ailment and was injured in a fall from a horse, both of which left her pretty much out of commission. We don't hear why she's bedridden here; we're led to believe that there really isn't anything wrong with her except that her overprotective father doesn't want her out of his sight. He's equally overprotective of her two sisters, one of whom, Henrietta (Maureen O'Sullivan), is covertly seeing a military man, who waits in the snow outside the house in hopes that Henrietta can slip out the door to talk, facing away from him so that her father won't know she's communicating with a member of the opposite sex. O'Sullivan is great here, fiery and animated, and I almost wish that she had been cast as Elizabeth, but I have to think that it was the director's intention to make the character so completely passive.

Anyway, Elizabeth has been pen pals with the poet Robert Browning (Fredric March), an impetuous, fire-breathing kind of guy who is a perfect example of how people think poets behave. "I'm a very modest man," he says, and after a pause, "I am, really." He's decided that he loves Elizabeth, and he won't let her sickness ("I'm a dying woman," she says mournfully at least eight times during the film) or her father get in the way of their happiness. He inspires her to rise and walk, so I guess he's a Jesus figure. The two poets are mad for each other, and it inevitably causes tension between the doting Elizabeth and her father.

Laughton plays her father as basically an Old Testament God. He's towering when it suits him, capable of terrible wrath and ominous proclamations backed by words of fire and the threat of action. In one of the few overall good scenes, he twists Henrietta's arms to almost the breaking point when she defies him. He's also a squirming sower of guilt when he needs to be. He gets to say this gem of a speech: "I shall never in any way reproach you. You shall never know by deed or word or hint of mine how much you have grieved and wounded your father by refusing to do the little thing he asked." Italian grandmothers have nothing on him.

The film is one of those serious, prestigious, literary productions that are nominated for a bunch of Oscars but are almost completely forgettable and lifeless. The great Laughton can't save it, even though he tried. The original play had more serious incest overtones, which were removed by censors, but Laughton reportedly said "They couldn't censor the gleam in my eye." His Edward is a great character, but he's saddled with carrying most of the film, as the scenes where he's not tearing up the scenery are flat and dull. The film is very stagy, limited to a few sets and photographed without creativity. The only interesting use of setting is the depiction of the staircase leading up to Elizabeth's room, which serves as a daunting obstacle to, and then the path to, her freedom.

The only shamelessly enjoyable thing about the film is Una O'Connor's performance as Wilson, Elizabeth's maid. She enlivens every scene she's in, gliding through the room like she's on rollers. O'Connor was a great character actor who might be best remembered as Minnie in the opening scenes of Bride of Frankenstein.

Norma Shearer was nominated for Best Actress and the film for Best Picture; Shearer lost to Claudette Colbert, who deserved her award while Shearer wouldn't have, and the film lost to It Happened One Night, and everything was right with the world.