Customer Reviews

A Nous La Liberte [VHS]

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

... The film is fully intact as Clair intended, and the deleted scenes are available for us to see. The circumstances of these cuts by Clair are fully explained on the DVD's deleted scene menu pages (Clair cut the scenes between the original release and the 1950 reissue), so it is totally inaccurate to say that the film has been "mutilated" since it was the director who made the cuts. The reviewer from Lincoln needs to pay a little more attention to history and stop writing such misleading gibberish.

Perhaps the most elegantly rendered feature film of the very early days of sound production (barring, perhaps, Chaplin's CITY LIGHTS), Clair's classic is such a seemingly effortless blend of romantic melancholy, bitter social criticism and gentle surrealism, that its many aesthetic qualities tend to overshadow the film's astounding technological innovations in the poetics of sound.
The fact that Criterion has thrown Clair's short film ENTR'ACTE onto the disc is reason enough to buy the dvd. The transfers of both the feature and the short are of superlative quality. It's an invaluable release.

A brilliant, elegant and sparkling French comedy. It resembles Chaplin's Modern Times, but is in many ways even funnier in depicting the similarity between factory and prison.

This early talkie is an unexpected joy to watch and an artful piece of transitional cinema. It's difficult to believe that Charlie Chaplin claimed he never saw René Clair's fanciful 1931 musical comedy since it predates many of the same leitmotifs that came up in Modern Times five years later, including pointed jabs at corporate greed interlaced with Keystone Cops-style slapstick. In fact, Clair seems completely inspired by Chaplin in the way he carefully orchestrates the chase scenes and the robotic assembly line in this film, so much so that Chaplin borrowed back the visual cues in Modern Times.

Clair sets up his story as an elaborate parable centered on two convicts, best friends Émile and Louis, who make toy horses in the prison assembly line. In a long-planned attempt to escape, Émile escapes thanks to a generous leg-up from Louis, who is caught and returned back to their cell. Years pass, and Émile becomes a successful industrialist in charge of a phonograph manufacturing business. Meanwhile, Louis serves out his term and upon release, ironically finds himself working in the assembly line of Émile's factory. After some hesitation, Louis and Émile reunite and join forces with a rapid-fire series of chaotic complications leading the two friends to realize that a life away from work may be their true fate.

The film master does not belabor his sociopolitical statements about materialism, but it is intriguing in hindsight to appreciate the film's prescience in showing France disconnected from the encroaching Nazi menace. Moreover, the film boasts startling visual elements thanks to Lazare Meerson's unmistakably Expressionist art direction. Henri Marchand and Raymond Cordy make a fine comedy team as Émile and Louis, though what really shines is the timeless spirit that Clair imbues this film. The 2002 Criterion Collection DVD includes two deleted scenes, a brief 1998 interview with Clair's widow, and a twenty-minute short, "Entr'acte", that Clair made with French artists Francis Picabia and Erik Satie. Speaking of Chaplin, in an audio essay, film historian David Robinson describes the plagiarism suit that the film's producers brought against Charlie Chaplin when Modern Times was released.

This review is for the Critetion DVD editon of the film

À nous la liberté , also known as "Liberty for Us" is another very nice film by Rene clair. The film is a satire of life working in a factory.

It is about an assembly line worker who falls in love with a secratary who works at the factory. Theare is some slapstick humor in the film and has several scenes where the characters sing. The film is considered a musical as well because of this.

The DVD has some great special features.

There is an sudio presentation of the plagarism lawsuit against Charlie Chaplin over his film "Modern Times". There is also a 1998 video interview with Bronja Clair and two deleted scenes.

Finally, Rene Clair's 1924 surrealist film Entr'acte is also on the DVD. It is a short film about a funeral where pepole chase a runaway wagon carrying the casket. Some scenes are played in a very cool slow motion which is better seen than read about.

I highly recommend this film!

Had me laughing out loud a few times. Usually not one for musicals i actually purchased this movie because i wanted the short, the extra "Entr'acte." The acting is fantastic, all though copied later by chaplin in "Modern Times" i enjoyed this movie much more then Chaplin's "Modern Times," the chemistry between Raymond Cordy and Henri Marchand is wonderful!

Just a response to another reviewer; yes, this is Clair's 1950 recut of the film. But the recut is ill-advised, and is generally considered by most historians as a prime example of someone far removed from the circumstances of the film's actual production butchering their own work.

Is this the 1931 classic, intact, as Clair originally intended?

No, it is a recut, which most critics feel strongly is a disgrace.

Do NOT buy this DVD; get the uncut version on VHS while you still can. Once again, Criterion should have restored the original version, rather than presenting this cut version; anything less violates entirely the spirit of the original film.

It's obvious Clair is a Charles Chaplain fan. Movies had come out of their infancy with Chaplain as the comedy pioneer. Today critics are not as enamored with the little tramp as the critics from the Twenties and Thirties, but Rene Clair makes the most of slapstick comedy or should I say he subdues it just enough to find his own signature.

Clearly, the new talkies confused comedy directors. A Nous la Liberte, the story of two escaped French convicts, was conceived as a silent film. Then music, songs and spare dialogue were inserted tentatively. The actors, Raymond Cordy as the nuevo rich industrialist and Henri Marchard as the Chaplain like tramp speak sparingly, but they do gesture as silent film actors.

Much has been discussed about Chaplain's supposed rip off. City Lights was made five years later and Chaplain and all his production people swore they never saw the French film. Clair himself declared his admiration for Chaplain, his delight that his master would use Clair's material. So this is a bit confusing. The scenes of industrial automation, assembly line inhumanity, were indeed similar in both films. The 20th Century factory was a discussion of that time. Was it dehumanizing or did it provide a better life than the idealized farm memory of the fading 19th Century? Are these films declarations for 1930's Socialism or Fascism? Personally, knowing the politics of Chaplain at least, we can see that the intellectuals preferred Socialism.

This is an abridged version of Clair's 1931 masterpiece, with two key sequences cut, and added to the DVD as "extras" in beat up 16mm prints, when original nitrate material is readily available. The two sequences in question are the singing flowers who serenade Emile outside the factory; and Emile's quest for romance in a Parisian cafe. All in all, this is about 10 minutes of material! It is impossible to overstate the effect that the elimination of these two scenes has on the film as a whole; it destroys, in large part, much of the magic of the film.

On the plus side, the subtitles are vastly superior to any other version available, and the transfer of the feature (minus the cuts) is superb....but with the cuts, you're really not getting the film. Criterion made a serious error with this one.

Sound quality is pretty bad. The background music comes through fairly well but the dialogue varies from comprehensible to zilch. And, of course, it helps to understand French (I do). All that said, the photography is pretty good. The images of the company factory/society(?) as a prison are quite striking, albiet dated. Not for the weak of heart or casual viewer. It certainly captures a particular view of industrialization and dehumanization fairly common in Europe during the 1920's and 1930's. Important for serious students of cinema/history.