‘À nous la liberté‘ – René Clair‘s 1931 film – is often mentioned in tandem with Chaplin’s ‘Modern Times’ from 1936. The central theme and anti-capitalist message are shared. In the perspective, the direct filiation is obvious. At the time, the producers of the French film filed a plagiarism lawsuit against those of the American film, but René Clair never joined this legal action, considering it a compliment that Chaplin was inspired by his film in making his masterpiece. In my opinion, René Clair‘s film is of the same caliber as Chaplin’s and perhaps the best film of the French director. In addition, it also owes many ideas and comic formulas to Chaplin’s films and the other classic American comedies of the silent film period. The two great directors, who also became good friends, influenced each other. René Clair demonstrated with this film that he was an inventive and courageous director, socially committed and a master of visual means of expression as well as of sound and music, just three years after the introduction of sound in cinema. The irony of history is that three decades later, René Clair became the target of criticism from the young wolves of the French New Wave. In fact, around 1930, he was as disruptive and inventive as Truffaut and his colleagues would be around 1960.
The scene that opens ‘À nous la liberté‘ takes place in a prison. The film’s heroes, Louis and Émile, are inmates working on an assembly line that manufactures toys. They prepare their escape, which they only partially succeed in. Only Louis manages to get past the prison walls, while Émile, who is left behind, holds the guards in place. A few years later, Louis is the owner of a gramophone factory, his success due to the application to industry of the assembly line work methods learned in prison. The metaphor is obvious. The supposedly liberating work brings profit by applying methods specific to the prison space. Émile, also released from prison, reunites with his friend who has become an industrialist and falls in love with a girl who works in his factory. However, the love is not shared and the prison past risks catching up with the two friends.
René Clair wrote the scripts and directed his films, making auteur cinema decades before this term was invented. He was perfectly synchronized and in dialogue with the cinema of the time, especially with the American one. The visual gags and especially the chases in ‘À nous la liberté‘ would find their place in any of the great comedies of the silent film period. The couple of friends resembles the one in the films with Laurel and Hardy, the character of Émile (played by Henri Marchand) being a combination of Charlot and Stan Laurel. Lazare Meerson‘s formidable set design takes some of the ideas from ‘Metropolis’, but processes and refines them, creating a direction of industrial anticipation specific to dystopian films up to the ‘The Matrix’ series. Georges Auric‘s music was composed especially for this film. The musical theme became a classic hit, and the way the music is combined with the visual dimension brings it closer to Brecht’s theater than to American musical comedies. The cinematography is also worth watching. Cinematographer Georges Périnal uses the mobile camera four decades before it was taken up on their shoulders by the filmmakers of the New Wave. Several visual scenes are anthological – the assembly lines of course, but also the scene that opens the film or the festivity scene at the end of the film that will be quoted many decades later by Milos Forman in ‘The Firemen’s Ball’ and which ends with the image of the top hats rolled by the wind. ‘À nous la liberté‘ is a delight for classic film lovers and a cinematic box of jewels.