John Litel

Nedda Harrigan

Carlyle Moore Jr.

Robert Warwick

George Irving

Boyd Irwin

Gordon Hart

Myrtle Stedman

Ted Osborne

Jesse Graves

Wade Lane

Charles Frederick Lindsley

Wilfred Lucas

Jack Mower

Paul Panzer

William Worthington

B. Reeves Eason

Forrest Barnes

Frank Craven

W. Howard Greene

Louis Hesse

Ted Smith

M.K. Jerome

Jack Scholl

Drama

History

Give Me Liberty

Warner Bros. Pictures

The Vitaphone Corporation

United States of America

CinemaSerf

Despite an half-decent effort from John Litel as he takes to a church in Virginia as Patrick Henry to espouse liberty from British colonial rule, the rest of this is all a rather lacklustre and overly theatrical costume drama with some serious over-acting. The presence of neatly suited and booted characters like “Moses” isn’t deemed relevant as these privileged white folks pontificate about liberty and freedom whilst just about every manual function in their lives is carried out by slaves. It’s that hypocrisy that becomes a little harder to stomach as this sets about illustrating, albeit inadvertently, that for the vast majority of women and for just about everyone of colour in Virginia, and elsewhere, all this would result in is a change from wigged and proud gents in London to equally wigged and proud gents closer to home. Had they just stuck to allowing Litel to deliver a complete version of Henry’s rousing and impassioned speech as if it were a monologue, then it might have worked. They didn’t, and what we have here is a borderline and nauseatingly simplistic critique on the glories of the as yet unformed USA versus the supposed and exaggerated tyrannies of the Old World. I found this to be annoying, sorry!

English