Rent A Nous La Liberte! (1931)

French classic - A Nous La Liberte! review by CP Customer

To warn certain readers- this is in black & white & subtitled. Personally I feel sorry for people who insist on an English soundtrack as they are depriving themselves of many great masterpieces but that's another story.

Clair's 1931 film does not strike me as being as "wonderful" as some of his later Hollywood efforts- notably "I Married a Witch" but it's an uplifting film that hearkens back to what we think of as a simpler age when shades of grey never entered moral issues. The film concerns the different fortunes of two prison escapees who meet up years later- one remains down & out but attuned with the important things of life- here a beautiful woman- & the other who has become a successful industrialist. It's touching & often very funny & Chaplin's debt to certain scenes which were used in "Modern Times" is obvious. His assertion that he had never seen the film doesn't ring true.

A lovely score from classical composer George Auric & a limited use of dialogue add to the often hypnotic feel of the film. Whether it should be in the NY Times best 1000 films list ahead of some of Clair's later films is more contentious.

At Work and Play - A Nous La Liberte! review by CH

There is much talk now of the way in which human labour will be supplanted by robots. As it was ninety years ago, when René Clair made A nous la liberté (1931) which more than inspired Chaplin's Modern Times (to Clair's delight).

The plot is simple. Two men (Raymond Cordy; Henri Marchand) are in gaol, their days spent at the side of a conveyor belt. After hours, in their cell, they are engaged in the more primitive task of breaking out by dint of sawing through the high window's bars (one standing upon the other to do so).

Come the break-out, only Cordy makes it. Ever quick to improvise, he becomes the owner of an impressive gramophone manufacturing company; this time, he is in charges of others who toil at a belt as the components speed by.

For all its dialogue, this straddles the end of the silent era. Much of one's interest is in watching rather than listening – although the ears are of course called upon to relish Auric's music as these visually emoting characters caper and chase in the very spirit of slapstick. Marchand also escapes, only to find himself a humble employee at this factory which is as whistle-driven as the gaol. After the camera has moved to and fro, as light has contended with shade time and again amidst these huge sets with towering doors at every turn, the inevitable comes to pass. Greed is exposed on all sides, top hats caught on the wind as thousand-franc notes elude grasping hands while the pair, escaping re-capture, walk into the sunlit countryside.

To relate so much of the plot is not unfair, for this is all less a story than a fable – something which depends upon its telling, as Clair does so well here. So much of subsequent film technique, around the world, is anticpated here, but it should not be regarded as the stuff of the lecture room: here is great entertainment.

This disc includes a fifteen-minute interview with Clair's widow, made for his centenary in 1998. Even more fascinating is that an extra is his 1924 twenty-minute film Entre'acte

From the beginning, cinema has turned upon chase scenes impossible to capture on stage or in prose. Little mentioned, though, is one of the best, Entr'acte. Not only directed by Clair, it has a scenario by the artist and polemicist Francis Picabia (admired by David Bowie); as if this were not enough, the music – which anticipates John Adams – is by Erik Satie, who appears in the opening scenes as somebody launching a cannon; this shot brings much in its (literal) wake, not least a scene in which Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp are engrossed in a game of chess. Along the way, at varying speeds, are dancers – and flowers which appear to be doing so, in a way that anticipates the unfurling women who recur in Busby Berkeley's films.

What is going on? To ask the question, as the cannonballs fly and bicycles are vigorously pedalled, is to go against the spirit of Dada as it merged into Surrealism. After all, who ever heard, in France, of a hearse being led by a camel, let alone one as bemused as this? Small wonder matters go awry, and, soon pilotless, the coffin speeds away. This downhill pursuit is a miracle of filming.

One might think that it could not be capped – but it is, and prepare to gasp, even when the final credit comes up. A joy.

Liberty on the Assembly Line - A Nous La Liberte! review by griggs

At first glance, À Nous la Liberté looks like a jaunty musical caper: songs, slapstick, and workers shuffling in sync. But that’s the trick. In 1931, with France still scarred by the Great War, René Clair chose not solemn realism but satire. He smuggled anger into comedy, showing prison and factory as two faces of the same machine. Liberty is reduced to a punch clock. It’s funny, but it’s also quietly furious.

Clair borrows the glitter of the Belle Époque—tunes, gadgets, the marvel of invention—and flips it over. Machines promise freedom but enforce routine. Consumer goods sell pleasure but deliver conformity. Even the industrialist is trapped by his wealth. The satire carries a Dadaist wink: light, cheeky, and precise.

Henri Marchand gives Émile warmth, softening the edge, while Clair choreographs bodies and machines with uncanny precision. The echoes of Léger’s Ballet mécanique are clear, and the film anticipates both Tati and Chaplin. Nearly a century later, the joke still lands. Most of us have felt like cogs, our “liberty” measured by the clock. À Nous la Liberté smiles, but its smile hides a bite.