Rent A Nous La Liberte! (1931)

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.

Satirical Comedy. - A Nous La Liberte! review by Steve

Another whimsical musical from René Clair in the early sound period, though this one has a political edge. It became controversial because the producers sued Charles Chaplin who quite extensively steals from it for Modern Times, released in '36. Though Chaplin brings in his own surrealism. And arguably Clair was influenced by the Englishman anyway.

A couple of jailbirds who escape from prison find very different fortunes on the outside. Raymond Cordy becomes a capitalist who gets rich enslaving workers on his dehumanising production line. Henri Marchand is a dropout who fails to be a good worker because he really doesn't want to play by the rules of industrialisation. He prefers to smell the flowers.

The leads make a likeable double act as their friendship ultimately overcomes the difference in status. For the workers, life on the outside is the same as prison. There is no freedom and people are destroyed by its spirit crushing conformity. If Clair was alive to see conditions today at an Amazon warehouse, he'd have a heart attack. This is quite a familiar dystopia.

There are wonderful expressionist sets, and a score by Georges Auric which occasionally bursts into satirical political songs. There's a lot of Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927), except the resolution is not to bridge capital and labour, but to opt out completely. Our heroes become a pair of (Chaplinesque) tramps. Given a choice between fascism and socialism, Clair picks anarchy.