Give Me Liberty

Name: Give Me Liberty
Released: 1936-12-19T00:00:00.000000Z
Rating: 6.4

The Most Inspiring and Important Short In Recent Years

1936 • 22 min • ★ 6.4 (13) • Released

Drama History

Patrick Henry's rousing speech before the Virginia legislature argues for colonial independence.

IMDb ↗

Original title: Give Me Liberty
Language: EN
Country: US
Budget: —
Revenue: —

Reviews & Ratings 1

CinemaSerf

Jun 28, 2025 · via TMDB

★ 5.0

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!

User reviews courtesy of TMDB.

Keywords 5

american revolution famous speech founding fathers short film usa history

Cast 13