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A Free Soul at Glasgow Film Theatre

Wednesday 7 September, 2022 at 6.15 pm

Film writers and critics Pamela Hutchinson and Christina Newland present some of Hollywood’s most risqué films (all new restorations, care of Park Circus and Warner Bros) made before the 1930’s Hays Code was enforced, in Pre-Code Hollywood: Rules Are Made to be Broken.

The divine Norma Shearer stars as an independent-minded young society woman who has been trained by her defence attorney father (Lionel Barrymore) to live without restraint, and who becomes trapped in a love triangle between the monied, kind Leslie Howard and the good-for-nothing rogue played by the delightfully evil Clark Gable. Her father, loving but consistently sozzled, successfully defends the gangster against a murder rap, not realising that his beloved daughter is about to embark on a lusty affair with the reprobate.

Penned by iconoclastic gossip columnist Adela Rogers St Johns and loosely recalling her own upbringing (her father was a real defence attorney too, even once representing disgraced silent star Fatty Arbuckle), A Free Soul is psychologically complex and earnest in spite of its sensationalist leanings: a genuinely open-minded exploration of what happens to nice girls when they fall for the bad boy – hard.

Christina Newland, Pre-Code Hollywood Season Co-Curator

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GFT, 12 Rose Street,  Glasgow G3 6RB

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