A Free Soul (1931)

A Free Soul
Directed by Clarence Brown
Written by Becky Gardiner from a novel by Adela Rogers St. John
1931/US
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Forbidden Hollywood Vol. 2

Jan Ashe: [Seductively] Hello, there.
Ace Wilfong, Gangster Defendant: Hello, yourself. Say, it’s great to come up and find you here like this.
Jan Ashe: Is it now? Well, what are you going to do about it?

A very pre-Code take on the pleasures and pitfalls of free love.

Steven Ashe (Lionel Barrymore) is a brilliant, but alcoholic, trial attorney, who has taught his daughter Jan (Norma Shearer) to think for herself. When Jan meets Ace Wilfong (Clark Gable), a gangster her father exonerated in a murder trial, she drops her steadfast fiancé (Leslie Howard) and “gives herself” to him.

The Ashe family has already practically cut off Stephen and Jan.  Then Stephen shows up at a soiree roaring drunk, and that is that.  When Jan takes up with Ace, she is disowned as well.  Both pretend not to care.

Stephen objects violently to Ace but Jan refuses to give him up.  When Stephen’s alcoholism is growing terminal, Jan promises not to see Ace again if her father will stop drinking.  They go on a three-week camping trip together.  But their return to civilization doesn’t go so well.  I will stop here.

It was refreshing to watch a film with a strong female protagonist, even if Norma does recognize the error of her ways by the final frame. The trial scenes, as usual, bothered me. I always watch these with a critical eye and the attorneys and judge almost never fail to trample on every rule of evidence in the book.  Everything else about this movie is A-OK.

I have mixed feelings about Norma Shearer as she usually overdoes it in my opinion.  I was looking at her filmography though and hadn’t realized the number of silent films she made.  I looked at her through those eyes and understood her mannerisms completely.  Lionel Barrymore makes a good drunk, for sure.

Lionel Barrymore won the Best Actor Oscar for his performance in A Free Soul.  The film was nominated in the categories of Best Actress and Best Director.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk7EYxPoHXs

I love this fan made video (spoiler warning)