Give Me Liberty

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!

A Vitaphone Technicolor Short Subject.

John Henry's passionate `GIVE ME LIBERTY' speech in 1775 rouses the Virginia legislators into joining the American Revolution.

This fine little film focuses in on Patrick Henry (1736-1799) and what finally led him to declare his beliefs regarding political separation from Great Britain. Actor John Litel does a magnificent job in performing the great speech which was delivered by Henry at St. John's Church in Richmond.

The film errs in putting too much of a romantic twist into the plot, with Henry missing his wife so much that he can't get motivated to make his declaration until he sees her enter the church balcony unexpectedly. The real story is more interesting. Henry's first wife, Sarah Shelton, whom he married in 1754, had gone completely insane. Mental illness was not understood in the 18th Century and was considered somewhat shameful. It is indeed ironic that Patrick Henry, that great champion of human liberty & freedom, kept his mad wife confined in the cellar. It was not until after her death that he wed Dorothea Dandridge.

GIVE ME LIBERTY won the Academy Award for Best Color Short Subject for 1936.

Often overlooked or neglected today, the one and two-reel short subjects were useful to the Studios as important training grounds for new or burgeoning talents, both in front & behind the camera. The dynamics for creating a successful short subject was completely different from that of a feature length film, something akin to writing a topnotch short story rather than a novel. Economical to produce in terms of both budget & schedule and capable of portraying a wide range of material, short subjects were the perfect complement to the Studios' feature films.

A short film from the Warner Bros. company, "Give Me Liberty" boasts Technicolor photography as the main attraction. It won an "Academy Award" as the best color short film of the year. This was one of several patriotic themed short films released as bonus historical features; they probably put theater audiences in a good mood. This one features John Litel portraying revolutionary war hero Patrick Henry, who is credited with the rallying cry, "Give me liberty, or give me death!" The line is cemented into the brains of kids who listened to their American history teachers; it perfectly illustrates the passion and determination of the United States founders.

**** Give Me Liberty (12/19/36) B. Reeves Eason ~ John Litel, Nedda Harrigan, George Irving, Robert Warwick

Give Me Liberty was the first of three short subjects in which character actor John Litel played the fiery Virginia bred founding father. This one is a competently made film which gives the essence of the real Patrick Henry.

One of the other reviewers mentioned that he thought Litel was old fashionedly flamboyant as Henry. But in point of fact that's what he was in real life. He was indeed the kind of spell binding orator whose words did move men. Henry was one of the leaders of the Virginia bar as well as a Delegate in the Virginia House of Burgesses, his summations to the jury were legendary.

That aroused a lot of jealousy among his contemporaries. Thomas Jefferson whose forte was writing not speaking, trained as a lawyer as a young man. I recall reading Dumas Malone's multi-volume Jefferson biography where Jefferson wrote in his diary about how hard he worked on researching precedents and that all Patrick Henry did was bamboozle juries with bull. Nothing's changed in over 230 years as far as lawyers in this country. Jefferson gave up law practice and it was Patrick Henry's stock in trade.

He was a mercurial man Henry, you never knew which side of an issue he'd wind up on. He was at various stages after the Revolution, a Federalist and an anti-Federalist whatever the mood struck him.

Don't look for consistency with Henry, but this film will give you a good idea what he was like in his glory days of the Revolutionary War.

It's going to be harder to take the Academy Award-winning "Give Me Liberty" seriously in the 21st century, since the characters declare that they don't want to live under slavery, even though many of them owned slaves. Patrick Henry's GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH sounds good until you learn that he tried to stop slaves from joining the British army (since the British promised the slaves freedom). Sure enough, the only black person in the movie is George Washington's servant who always obeys his master.

If the short has any upside, it's the focus on democracy.* I guess that nowadays we're used to learning about the Founding Fathers from Lin-Manuel Miranda's "Hamilton" (I haven't seen it but I've heard a lot about it). Obviously, there was a lot more to the US's early history than what the Founding Fathers did. I guess that the movie's worth seeing, even though we're going to interpret it differently than how it got intended.

*Occasional, people will try to talk about what's legal as a form of appeal to authority, but don't forget that the anti-monarchy, pro-democracy pronouncements from Washington, Jefferson, etc, were illegal.