'THE BARRETTS OF WIMPOLE STREET'.......YET ANOTHER GUY WHO WANTS TO DATE HIS DAUGHTER.....

The Barretts Of Wimpole Street (1957)    We contemplated saving a post on this one til next Father's Day, the most wildly inappropriate date we could think of for it.........but we're itchin' to jump back into classic films, so here goes.......

          First Big Plus:  The luminous Jennifer Jones as poetess Elizabeth Barrett, forever sickly and housebound on Wimpole Street, forever doted upon by her vast amount of siblings.....(what looks like ten brothers and couple of sisters)......and tyrannized by her uppercrust father (John Gielgud) a man possessed of an iron will and, if you follow the subtext and not-so-subtle hints, a permanent hard-on for Elizabeth.....

           Bobby Browning To The Rescue.....Perk up, one and all.....a jailbreak for Elizabeth is in the works, courtesy of her frothing-at-the-metaphors suitor, fellow poet Robert Browning......played by Bill Travers as if he'd just read a Thesaurus from cover to cover while popping an entire bottle of Cialis.....in other words, this guy's more ready to go than Secretariat at the starting gate.....

           Gielgud's Daddy-From-Hell   Remarkable to come across in a l950's studio film, this may be one of the sickest father-daughter relationships we've seen in a mainstream movie, equaled only by the current duo of Baby Orange and Ivanka. Gielgud's sputtering, incestuous rants provide endlessly perverse fun.....and as a bonus, we get to see him plant a big sloppy smackeroo on a niece who unwisely sits on his lap........(this old wheeze's lap should have "Crime Scene" yellow tape wrapped around it.....

            Jennifer, you jewel.....a true pleasure to see one of our all-time favorite Golden Age actresses hold her own in the formidable company of so many stage-trained Brits. A movie so unabashedly overheated and ripely romantic might come off as precious and quaint when viewed in this jaded, cynical millennium, but Jones still commands your attention.....and breaks your heart. (We practically feel her aches and pains ourselves as she staggers around the Barrett mansion on her debilitated limbs....)

            Jennifer, how do we love thee.......let us count the ways.......or this case, a whole mess 'o BQ stars,,,4 of 'em (****)......and thanks to the ultra-Cinemascope, we can see easily see all your brothers and sisters at one time.....