ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

Infamousta brilliant actors, brilliant editing

DipitySkillful an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

Phillida Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

gavin6942 An alcoholic lawyer who successfully defended a notorious gambler on a murder charge objects when his free-spirited daughter becomes romantically involved with him.Clark Gable made such an impression in the role of a gangster who pushes Norma Shearer around that he was catapulted from supporting player to leading man, a position he held for the rest of his career. That is really the only redeeming thing about this film, seeing Gable in an early role really busting out.Not that the film is a bad one, but there's a good reason you never hear anyone talking about "A Free Soul". It's not a classic, and it doesn't need to be rediscovered.

rickrudge A Free Soul (1931)This is the movie that made a minor character actor into a romantic superstar. Famous defense attorney (and alcoholic), Stephen Ashe (Lionel Barrymore) is defending a murder suspect and gangster, Ace Wilfong (Clark Gable). An interesting "If the hat doesn't fit, you must acquit" causes Ace to get released. Here is where Ace meets Stephen's free-spirited daughter, Jan (Norma Shearer).Flighty Jan is bored with her nice-guy boyfriend, Dwight Wintrhop (Leslie Howard) and goes for the bad boy, Ace in a big way. The only problem is that Ace has fallen for Jan and when she wants to get out of the fling, Ace objects in a big way. To top that off, her dad, Stephen is hitting bottom with his drinking problem.Although, this isn't a great movie for Gable, his man-handling of Norma Shearer touched a nerve with females audiences that caused MGM to try to duplicate Gable's persona throughout the rest of his career.Unlike the legend that Gable's slapping Norma Shearer's character made him hot for the ladies (he actually only pushes her down on the couch), I think it was him telling her that he loved her and he wasn't going to let her go, that sealed the deal with his new found fans.

sol **SPOILERS** It's when San Francisco defense attorney Stephen Ash, Lionel Barrymore, had his free spirited daughter Jan, Norma Shearer, come with him to the courthouse where he was in the process of arguing a murder case that things turned sour for him Jan as well as her fiancée the cultured genteel and sensitive Dwight Winthrop, Leslie Howard.Pulling a rabbit out of his hat Ash, in the O. J Simpson style it don't fit you must acquit, proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that his client notorious SF gangster Ace Wilfong, Clark Gable, is innocent of gunning down a man in front of some half dozen witnesses! It was the handsome and sure of himself Wilfong who stole Ash's daughter's heart and in no time at all she broke off her engagement with a heart-broken Dwight to become Wilfong's personal squeeze and gun moll.This affair between his daughter Jan and the sneering and murderous Wilfong drives Ash, who had earlier saved Wilfong's neck from the San Quentin gallows, to hit the bottle to the point where he becomes too drunk to do his job as a defense attorney! It also has both him and Jan disowned by their family the wealthy and socially registered, the cream California's elite, Ash's who want nothing to do with them. Seeing what her affair had done to both her and her now helplessly drunk father Jan makes a deal with him that if he stops boozing she'll cut Ace Wilfong out of her life forever! Taking a three month vacation in the Northern California mountains both Jan and her dad stick to their commitments until the booze, or lack of it, get to old man Ash's dried out, in lacking the stuff, brain. Hitting the bottle harder then ever Ash drops out of sight until the last 15 or so minutes of the film. And what a amazing turnaround Ash makes with what little time that he still had left! ***SPOILERS*** Jan now destroyed over her father's non stop drinking binges goes back to Wilfong who treats her like a doormat for daring to leave him. Dwight who was out of the picture all that time comes back into Jan's life trying to get her away from Wilfong who's in the process of manhandling her into marrying him. In a final effort to prevent the marriage between Jan and Wilfong from taking place Dwight make the ultimate sacrifice by putting his life on San Quentin's death row by blasting a surprised Wilfong in the San Francisco office of the illegal casino that he runs! With Ash's good friend Eddie, James Gleason,tracking him down in a skid row flophouse on he San Francisco waterfront he's sobers himself up to take the case, without him knowing about it, of the indited for first degree murder Dwight Winthrop. That despite Dwight being more then willing to die, by being hanged, for freely doing what he believed in: Killing Ace Wilfong to prevent him from marrying Jan!In what has to be one of the most electrifying courtroom performance in movie history a barley sober and on the brink of death, from what the booze did to his heart liver and kidneys, Stephen Ash in his noble attempt to save Dwight's life bares his troubled and tortured soul to a shocked jury and a packed and standing room only courtroom in how he and only he was responsible for Wilfong's death in not being the father he should have been to his daughter Jan! It took everything out of him but in the end Ash's heart-felt and tearful summation did in fact save Dwight from the gallows but the poor man, with his weak heart finally giving out from the abused of his boozing, wasn't around to see it!

secondtake A Free Soul (1931)Clark Gable says, "I'm telling you." And Norma Shearer, dressed in a sexy silk dress, replies, "Oh no, you're not. Nobody is."That sums up this astonishing movie. I can't believe A Free Soul is so little known, or that so many viewers don't get the depth of its meaning then...and now. Throw in three of the most amazing actors of the early 1930s--Lionel Barrymore, Clark Gable, and Norma Shearer--and you can't help be impressed, and moved, and intrigued. It's about strength of character (three or four characters, in fact). It's about being a modern person, and having modern problems. And it's about facing them, openly, honestly.So what holds it back? Well, for one thing, it has a lot of talk, a lot of simple dialog about some very not simple things. If you accept the characters and their need to talk, you will see a very honest confrontation with alcoholism, and with what is at first a kind of sex addiction, or what is later developed to be simply unbridled love for a man outside of marriage. But the parallel between two temptations is real, and rather powerful, and the sacrifices each of the two afflicted characters make is intense. Barrymore (as the one nipping the bottle) and Shearer (as the one too much in love, or in love with lovemaking) play their parts perfectly. They have moments of extraordinary clarity, and moments of abandonment. And they confront each other in a way that is completely reasonable.There are other aspects here worth at least lifting an eyebrow at, namely the very close relationship, almost as platonic lovers, between these two. Gable as a lovable but brutal and deceptive gangster is perfect, too--gorgeous and hard, charming and untrustworthy. The milieu is well developed, from barroom to hotel room to courtroom. This isn't a Warner Brothers knock-you-out crime film, it isn't even Three on a Match, for an example of a compromise between a woman's picture and a gangster flick. It's a heady drama, beautifully laid out and progressively involving, with director Clarence Brown (famous for a whole string of such interpersonal, romantic dramas over several decades) knowing what makes a film really matter.