If I Were Free

Dir. Elliott Nugent

66 Minutes

USA 1933

Starring: Irene Dunne, Clive Brook, Nils Asther, Henry Stephenson

***1/2/*****

The listless, unhappily married, and often drunk (love the bar-hopping opening sequence) Gordon Evers (Colin Brook) enters into an affair with the recently divorced Sarah (Irene Dunne). While Evers’ wife, also complacent in her role of wife (only briefly seen), always said she would make divorce easy if either part ever wanted it, she gets greedy as Gordon becomes more successful in his business, and the two carry out their affair in secret. Until Gordon eventually receives a nasty medical diagnosis. 

Lots of quiet pleasures throughout the film, most namely in the early scenes of Dunne and Brook who have a lovely chemistry. Their love proclamations come early (as these things are want to do) and the film is more about what keeps them apart than what brings them together. Although the film drifts a bit towards weepy melodrama in the third act, the two leads keep it on point and the lack of judgment on the point of view of the film (considering the central theme of adultry) is quite an interesting approach. The film does not wrong either party (except maybe their spouses, who are poorly written—the first time we see Dunne’s he is pointing a gun at her!), but rather gets its drama from the sad, and all too common, idea that if timing was a hair different we could be happier. Ending tips the film over for going in a (thankfully) unpredictable direction.

August 24th, 2019