Copyright 3 June 1931 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Distributing Corp. New York opening at the Astor, 2 June 1931. 10 reels. 91 minutes.
SYNOPSIS: Society girl falls for a gangster.
NOTES: Academy Award, Best Actor, Lionel Barrymore (defeating Jackie Cooper in Skippy, Richard Dix in Cimarron, Fredric March in The Royal Family of Broadway and Adolphe Menjou in The Front Page).
Norma Shearer was nominated for Best Actress, but lost to Marie Dressler in MGM's Min and Bill. Brown was nominated for Directing, but lost to Norman Taurog (Skippy).
Number nine in the 1931 Film Daily poll of U.S. film critics. Filmed on a 31-day shooting schedule, negative cost was $529,000. Initial net domestic rentals amounted to $773,000, leaving a tidy profit of $244,000 for the studio — plus the cream of overseas sales.
MGM re-made this picture in 1953 as The Girl Who Had Everything with Elizabeth Taylor, William Powell and Fernando Lamas.
The stage play opened on 12 January 1928 in Broadway's Playhouse Theatre and ran for 100 performances. Kay Johnson was the socialite, Lester Lonergan had the Barrymore part, and Melvyn Douglas played the gangster, Ace Wilfong. The director was none other than George Cukor.
COMMENT: An odd film on many counts. (1) It's not stage-giggling Oscar-nominee, Norma Shearer, or even fulsomely theatrical Oscar- winner, Lionel Barrymore, who walks off with all the acting honors, but newcomer Clark Gable who effortlessly steals every scene in which he appears. And fortunately, they are many. Leslie Howard, by contrast, has only a small part. It's a key role, but, for some reason — maybe as a protest against the scene-chewing antics of Shearer and Barrymore (who are often abetted by James Gleason, who doesn't so much over- act as never fail to draw attention to himself) — Howard seems determined to underplay. It's only in his final brief scene with Gable and the long prison encounter with Shearer that he comes across forcefully and effectively.
Gable, on the other hand, makes a solid impression right from the start. If anything, he gets more fascinating as the plot progresses as he strips away his initial surface veneer of ingratiating charm.
(2) Clarence Brown, the distinguished director of The Eagle and The Goose Woman (both 1925), Flesh and the Devil (1926) and more than a dozen other captivating silents, seems to be even less at home with sound here than he was the previous year with Anna Christie. The choice of camera angles is often jarring, using intercut, ill-matching close-ups which serve to break up the rhythm of a scene rather than re-inforce it. He seems to have exercised little control over his players either, letting them do much as they like, and making no effort to integrate the various acting styles on offer. It's astonishing that Robert Z. Leonard, not exactly noted as the world's finest craftsman, did a much smoother and far more polished job with Shearer on The Divorcée (1929). And just two months after the release of A Free Soul, W.S. Van Dyke's supremely polished work with Barrymore on Guilty Hands (shot in half the time on a fraction of the budget) made Brown look like a rank amateur.
(3) The script. Its trick opening creates a mood of uncertainty in the mind of a viewer, even if the implication of incest was meant to be taken seriously. Perhaps it was. Perhaps the whole point of the script is that the relationship between father and daughter was potentially or mentally incestuous even though no further physical contact than the hugging and cuddling we see on the screen actually took place. In this connection it's worth bearing in mind Barrymore's next assignment for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, W.S. Van Dyke's Guilty Hands, which, as previously mentioned, was released just two months later. In outline, Bayard Veiller's script bears remarkable similarities (even in minor details like its trick opening): Once again, Barrymore is a famous lawyer and once again he is determined to prevent his daughter (this time played by the lovely Madge Evans) marrying a scoundrel. But this time, there is absolutely no doubt that the Barrymore character's apparent concern for his daughter is plainly incestuous. (Guilty Hands, incidentally, is a far, far superior film on all counts than the comparatively tacky A Free Soul).
(4) Despite Gable's saving performance, the overall impression the 2004 viewer takes away from A Free Soul, is that, aside from the Gable scenes, it's a creaky old melodrama, a museum piece typical of so-called "vintage" movies, almost laughable in its overdone theatrics. To me, it's a great shame that this wheezy, outdated, predictably plotted, impossibly outmoded "actors' holiday" is presented again and again on TV, whereas a contemporary masterpiece like "Guilty Hands" from the very same studio lies forgotten and neglected. Is Norma Shearer really that sublime an actress? To judge from her contrived performance here (and to a lesser extent in "The Divorcée") definitely not.
SYNOPSIS: Society girl falls for a gangster.
NOTES: Academy Award, Best Actor, Lionel Barrymore (defeating Jackie Cooper in Skippy, Richard Dix in Cimarron, Fredric March in The Royal Family of Broadway and Adolphe Menjou in The Front Page).
Norma Shearer was nominated for Best Actress, but lost to Marie Dressler in MGM's Min and Bill. Brown was nominated for Directing, but lost to Norman Taurog (Skippy).
Number nine in the 1931 Film Daily poll of U.S. film critics. Filmed on a 31-day shooting schedule, negative cost was $529,000. Initial net domestic rentals amounted to $773,000, leaving a tidy profit of $244,000 for the studio — plus the cream of overseas sales.
MGM re-made this picture in 1953 as The Girl Who Had Everything with Elizabeth Taylor, William Powell and Fernando Lamas.
The stage play opened on 12 January 1928 in Broadway's Playhouse Theatre and ran for 100 performances. Kay Johnson was the socialite, Lester Lonergan had the Barrymore part, and Melvyn Douglas played the gangster, Ace Wilfong. The director was none other than George Cukor.
COMMENT: An odd film on many counts. (1) It's not stage-giggling Oscar-nominee, Norma Shearer, or even fulsomely theatrical Oscar- winner, Lionel Barrymore, who walks off with all the acting honors, but newcomer Clark Gable who effortlessly steals every scene in which he appears. And fortunately, they are many. Leslie Howard, by contrast, has only a small part. It's a key role, but, for some reason — maybe as a protest against the scene-chewing antics of Shearer and Barrymore (who are often abetted by James Gleason, who doesn't so much over- act as never fail to draw attention to himself) — Howard seems determined to underplay. It's only in his final brief scene with Gable and the long prison encounter with Shearer that he comes across forcefully and effectively.
Gable, on the other hand, makes a solid impression right from the start. If anything, he gets more fascinating as the plot progresses as he strips away his initial surface veneer of ingratiating charm.
(2) Clarence Brown, the distinguished director of The Eagle and The Goose Woman (both 1925), Flesh and the Devil (1926) and more than a dozen other captivating silents, seems to be even less at home with sound here than he was the previous year with Anna Christie. The choice of camera angles is often jarring, using intercut, ill-matching close-ups which serve to break up the rhythm of a scene rather than re-inforce it. He seems to have exercised little control over his players either, letting them do much as they like, and making no effort to integrate the various acting styles on offer. It's astonishing that Robert Z. Leonard, not exactly noted as the world's finest craftsman, did a much smoother and far more polished job with Shearer on The Divorcée (1929). And just two months after the release of A Free Soul, W.S. Van Dyke's supremely polished work with Barrymore on Guilty Hands (shot in half the time on a fraction of the budget) made Brown look like a rank amateur.
(3) The script. Its trick opening creates a mood of uncertainty in the mind of a viewer, even if the implication of incest was meant to be taken seriously. Perhaps it was. Perhaps the whole point of the script is that the relationship between father and daughter was potentially or mentally incestuous even though no further physical contact than the hugging and cuddling we see on the screen actually took place. In this connection it's worth bearing in mind Barrymore's next assignment for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, W.S. Van Dyke's Guilty Hands, which, as previously mentioned, was released just two months later. In outline, Bayard Veiller's script bears remarkable similarities (even in minor details like its trick opening): Once again, Barrymore is a famous lawyer and once again he is determined to prevent his daughter (this time played by the lovely Madge Evans) marrying a scoundrel. But this time, there is absolutely no doubt that the Barrymore character's apparent concern for his daughter is plainly incestuous. (Guilty Hands, incidentally, is a far, far superior film on all counts than the comparatively tacky A Free Soul).
(4) Despite Gable's saving performance, the overall impression the 2004 viewer takes away from A Free Soul, is that, aside from the Gable scenes, it's a creaky old melodrama, a museum piece typical of so-called "vintage" movies, almost laughable in its overdone theatrics. To me, it's a great shame that this wheezy, outdated, predictably plotted, impossibly outmoded "actors' holiday" is presented again and again on TV, whereas a contemporary masterpiece like "Guilty Hands" from the very same studio lies forgotten and neglected. Is Norma Shearer really that sublime an actress? To judge from her contrived performance here (and to a lesser extent in "The Divorcée") definitely not.