Kattiera Nana I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

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.

jacobs-greenwood A pre-code classic starring Clark Gable, Norma Shearer, Lionel Barrymore, and Leslie Howard. The first 45 minutes or so (don't blink, it sizzles) and the dialogue are especially great. Directed by Clarence Brown who, along with Shearer, earned an Oscar nomination; Barrymore won (on his ONLY acting nomination!) as Best Actor in a Leading Role.Gable is Ace Wilfong, a mob leader that lawyer Stephen Ashe (Barrymore) successfully defends in a murder case (in a manner strikingly similar to Johnnie Cochran's "if it doesn't fit, you can't convict" defense of O.J. Simpson some 60 years later). After the trial, Ashe's daughter Jan (Shearer) meets Ace and, looking him up and down, is instantly infatuated with him.Later, there's a party at the Ashe family mansion, run by Grandma (Lucy Beaumont) who does not approve of the gangster. But Ace responds to her dressing down saying "a lot of people don't believe that gag about being born equal". Stephen, who's assistant (James Gleason) is always there to provide him with adequate lubrication, shows up drunk and upsets everyone. Jan leaves with Ace who's fast life gives her a thrill.Jan breaks her engagement (to Howard) and begins a secret, dangerous affair with Ace, becoming a loose woman and saying things like "don't talk, be a man of action" and laying back, reaching up to him uttering "put 'em around me" insisting that he "take" her right then and there. However, she is discovered by Stephen, who obviously doesn't approve. Stephen then dresses down Ace saying "the only time I hate democracy is when one of you mongrels forget where you belong ... a few dollars and a clean shirt and you move across the railroad tracks".When Jan realizes she can't handle the situation she's gotten herself into, she makes a deal with her father to go away with him if he'll stop drinking. So it's off to the wilderness where father and daughter, with Gleason in tow, have some quality bonding time. Eventually, however, the temptation is too great for Stephen, and he disappears.Jan returns to find an angry, clueless Ace, who wants her back else he'll ruin her high society reputation. To protect her, Howard kills Ace and turns himself in, refusing to say why he killed him to protect Jan's honor.Stephen is found on skid row but is revived long enough for (Barrymore to earn an Oscar, giving) a speech to the jury in which he says Howard acted when he, a failure as a father, couldn't. And then collapses (dead?). Howard is freed and says (unearned and unwarranted): "the secret of my success is 'never say die'". I mean, the guy just got saved from the gallows because of his own noble silence whence he had clearly given up.

MissSimonetta A Free Soul (1931) is so misleading. Hot off her smash hit The Divorcée, Norma Shearer seems like she'll be playing another empowered woman. With Lionel Barrymore, Clark Gable, and Leslie Howard backing her up, you'd think this film would be a classic of pre-code. Shearer plays a hard-drinking lawyer's free-spirited daughter who takes up a passionate affair with a gangster; however, her liberated sexuality comes with an awful price.And boy is it awful! The film goes out of its way to humiliate and chastise the heroine (and in turn, the audience) for her sexual exploration. It's complete with Barrymore giving a courtroom speech that reeks of Oscar bait and Leslie Howard being given next to nothing to do but sit back and make goo goo eyes at Shearer.Of course, it's not an entire waste. The first half of the picture is fun and full of hot material, like Shearer in a sheer evening gown. She never looked sexier (how I yearned to be Gable in this movie). Barrymore and Gable give solid supporting performances, though the material does not allow them to be at their best. We can only dream of what could have been, alas.

laddie5 Yeah, yeah, it's Gable and Howard 8 years before Gone With the Wind, and even then the former makes the latter look like a eunuch. A number of posters seem flummoxed by this little coincidence and by the early-talkie theatricality of this movie. But for its time it really moves and breathes, particularly in the impressive scenes of Norma Shearer and Lionel Barrymore camping in the Sierras, trying and failing to leave their addictions behind and repair their broken relationship.Technically, this movie may be primitive, but in terms of content and meaning you couldn't get it made today: it's the story of a woman who uses a thug only for her own sexual pleasure, and the baffled and violent way the men in her life react. All three of them are outwardly brilliant and successful -- the lawyer, the gangster, and the rich polo player -- but have their vanity and weakness exposed when confronted with a powerful woman making her own choices. Some of the quieter moments of this movie are pretty devastating.p.s. strange how the myth that Gable "slaps" Shearer persists... are people really watching this movie? He shoves her back onto a couch twice, and that's it. The real violence is what she does to him by treating him as a boy toy.