A FREE SOUL

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 217, 7 May 1932, Page 2

A FREE SOUL

NORMA SHEARER IN NEW PICTURE FOR MAJESTIC. CONVINCING ACTING. An engrossing story, brilliant acting, expert directing and ultra-lavish settings contrive to make Norma Shearer's new screen drama, "A Free Soul," coming on Thursday, May 12 to the Majestic, one of the outstanding pictures of ,the year. Miss Shearer, who seems to be turning out one success after another, never looked more. stunning or acted more convincingly than in this dramatic and fast-moving story of a modern girl who has been brought up by a brilliant but eonstantly intoxicated father whose theories on freedom estrange her from those she loves, and eventually make her the central figure of a spectacular murder case. When the father finds his daughter in the arrns of a notorious' gambler he realises that freedom may be all right in theory but not in practice. Torn between love for her father and the gambler, the girl attempts to make a conmromise by consentmg to give un her lover if her fath°r will renounee xhe drinking which is bringiug him lower and lower in the esteem of otners. When he fails. the disillusionet heroine deeides to abandon herself to the i gambler, but fate decrees otherwise. | Lionel Barrymore is a dominant i figure as the lawyer father who bares j his own past in eourt to save the j happiness of the girl whom in his love he has so terribly wronged. Excdlent performances are also offered by Leslie Howard as a millionaire sportsman in love with Miss Shearer, and by Clark Gable, who, as the gambler, eclipses his previous wrork in "Dance, Fools, Dance" and "The Secret Six.'' James Gleason and Lucy Beaumont do vrell hy smaller roles. But ehief honoui's must go to Miss Shearer, who eombines an unusual beauty with a magnilicent aeting ability and a power to make the most of every dramatic opportunity! In her new vehicle she proves herself to be even more fascinating than in her two earlier successes, "The Divorcee" and "Let Us Be Gay.''