Free to Love

After a two-year stint in the reformatory, Clara Bow (as Marie Anthony) goes to shoot the judge who wrongly sent her there. Incredibly, wealthy Winter Hall (as Winthrop Orr) has just realized his error, and offers to take Ms. Bow in as his ward. After accepting the proposition, Bow begins to romance young preacher Donald Keith (as John Crawford). Alas, the young couple's chances for happiness are complicated by both her past, and his unexpected connection to underworld figures, like sleazy Raymond McKee (as Tony).

"Free to Love" is an odd little melodrama. It does feature the very likable pairing of Bow and Keith, albeit in stranger than the expected roles. Hallam Cooley (as Jack Garner) and Charles Mailes (as Kenton Crawford) are good additions to the aforementioned players. Raymond McKee's portrayal of the stooped squealer "Tony" is a particularly showy and heroic role. Bow exhibits a flair for the dramatic. And, actor Frank O'Connor proves himself a promising director.

****** Free to Love (11/20/25) Frank O'Connor ~ Clara Bow, Raymond McKee, Donald Keith

This old Clara Bow melodrama moves quickly and has a story that holds your attention. Bow plays a young woman trying to get a new start after being unjustly sentenced to a term in a reformatory. The story that follows is not very plausible, and it has a couple of rather routine elements, but it does have a lot of action and creates some suspense. Bow's performances and many of her films relied on her personality and her contemporary appeal, rather than on depth or creativity, and thus they have not always held up as well over the years as the best movies of the era have. But she's usually worth watching, and while this one does show its age, it's still a decent film that is worth a look for fans of silent movies.

Having just watched "The Vamp" Theda Bara in A Fool There Was on YouTube, I thought I'd go to another sex symbol of the silent era on the same site and seek out a film starring "The 'It' Girl", Clara Bow. Unfortunately, the one I watched, Free to Love, was a melodrama about a girl wrongly sent to an institution a couple of years ago who goes to her accuser and confronts him with a gun. That accuser now knows her innocence and asks for her forgiveness, which she does. Then there's some various twists that sort of made my head hurt and there's this twitchy guy named Tony and...Like I said, this was a melodrama that provided Ms. Bow and others to overact like you see in many silent pictures. I watched wanting to care about the characters but I just wanted the whole thing to be over. And on top of that, the print itself was just so blurry and the music picked to score the film was so overwhelming, it was just overkill for me. I also could've sworn some scenes were edited. So on that note, unless you're a silent movie buff with lots of curiosity, I wouldn't recommend Free to Love.

You may have heard about how Clara Bow was the It Girl of the Prohibition era. 1927's "It" (not to be confused with the Stephen King novel) was her most famous outing, but another example was 1925's "Free to Love". This movie doesn't have any sort of complex plot, but it's still enjoyable enough for its short runtime. Worth seeing.

Free to Love (1925)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Marie Anthony (Clara Bow) gets released from a reformatory so she heads to the judge's house who wrongly sent her away. Once at the house she pulls a gun on him but the judge (Winter Hall) breaks down admitting he was wrong and offers to take her in as his own. She accepts and soon falls in love with Reverend (Donald Keith) but soon her crooked path catches up with her. Okay, this melodrama is just downright bad, bad, bad. I mean really bad from the start to the end but the thing is so bad that I actually found myself somewhat enjoying what was going on. There are some really embarrassing moments here and they start as the beginning when the judge just overlooks the fact that this woman has pulled a gun on him. She hates him with a passion but they break down and become best friends in the matter of seconds. Even sillier is a supporting character who is either a hunchback trying to copy Lon Chaney or the character is suffering from some type of brain damage. Either way this guy does the dumbest tricks and how the film tries to make him some tortured soul is just hilarious when you really pay attention to it. The relationship between Marie and the Reverend is just as silly and not for a second did I believe anything between them. Once again Bow serves as eye candy as her acting leaves a lot to be desired. I thought there were times when she was way over-the-top and others where it just seemed like she didn't know what she was doing. I'm willing to guess she was overworked considering she made so many movies in 1925 alone or perhaps the director just didn't want to tell her to do another take. Whatever the reason I didn't care too much for her here and Keith is just as bland as was the case in the other films he did with Bow. At just 61-minutes there's not much that happens here but when the film does try to be drama it comes off more as a comedy.