Rene Clair’s 1931 comedy À Nous La Liberté is reminiscent of Chaplin’s 1936 sentimental and satirical silent feature Modern Times -- so reminiscent, in fact, that the production studio for À Nous La Liberté sued Chaplin for plagiarism when his highly successful film appeared. This was not only an embarrassment for Clair, who had deep admiration for Chaplin, but has also placed Clair’s fine film forever in the shadow of Chaplin’s more famous work. Yet, À Nous La Liberté, which means “Liberty to Us”, is a groundbreaking film in its own right. It stands at the transition point between silent and integrated sound films. Some portions of À Nous La Liberté are silent while others incorporate not only dialogue but even music. It is ironic that Clair should have participated so significantly in this monumental transition considering that he had long opposed the advent of sound technology.

Like Chaplin’s film, À Nous La Liberté is a delicately blended mix of slapstick humor (which had been cultured over many years of silent film productions) and biting social satire. The opening is set in a prison where convicts are making toy horses on an assembly line while singing hymns to liberty. Their movements are synchronized to the rhythms of music and assembly. Later, when they eat, we observe that their movements in daily activities have acquired a similarly mechanical appearance. Only two prisoners stand out from the others, when they exhibit the insolence to wink at one another. These are our two protagonists, prison buddies Louis (Raymond Cordy) and Emile (Henri Marchand). They have planned an escape, but during the attempt, the plan unravels and only Louis makes it to freedom, while Emile sacrifices himself to ensure Louis’s getaway. Although Louis is pursued by the police, he is able to steal a bicycle and by good fortune becomes integrated into a bicycle race where his prison number is mistaken for a contestant number. He actually wins the race and receives the prize money! These fortuitous happenstances turn out to be opening stanza in a medley of good fortune for Louis.

Louis quickly becomes a phonograph salesman. (This is an interesting choice on Clair’s part, building as it does on the revolutionary incorporation of sound in the film itself.) He parlays that success into a phonograph store, and that success into ownership of a large company that manufactures phonographs in a state-of-the-art factory. Louis has quickly remade his life from prison inmate to wealthy industrial capitalist. The factory, however, is eerily similar to the prison from which he emerged, with the same dehumanizing, mechanized assembly line and overseers and guards suggestive of the fascist state that was just beginning to emerge across the eastern French border. (In 1931, it was still soon enough in the growth of fascism to be content with laughing at and mocking its more absurd features.)

Meanwhile, Emile, a rather doleful looking fellow, has finally finished his prison term and relishes his newly acquired liberty through idle vagrancy. He is soon arrested again, however, because in the emerging industrial society “work is mandatory because work means liberty.” Once again in a cell, he attempts suicide by hanging himself on a rope tied to the grating on the window, but instead pulls the grating loose. As he escapes, he spots the girl of his dreams, a bourgeois young lady standing in the window of a dwelling across from his prison cell.

Soon, Emile aimlessly wanders into a line of factory works and gets swept into a factory – one of Louis’s factories. There are high jinx aplenty, now, as Emile’s free spirit and romantic sensitivity disrupts the orderly and mechanized activities of factory life, especially when he reencounters the same girl he had previously spotted. Inevitably, Emile comes face to face with Louis, recognizing him immediately despite his change in appearance, while Louis, at first, hopes to ignore Emile and send him away. Gradually, however, Emile’s free spirit reawakens Louis’s recollections of his earlier self and their friendship is rekindled. More gags follow as neither Emile nor the reclaimed Louis can fit in with the elevated circle of business tycoons and socialites of Louis’s new acquaintance.

Louis’s life as a successful tycoon is soon jeopardized by a gang of ex-cons who recognize him from their days together in prison. Their demand is for half of all he has made or they will expose his true identity to the police. Later, he is exposed, but his escape and Emile’s is facilitated in the nick of time by a bag full of money blowing open in a high wind, creating chaos as money-grubbing junior executives and officials wildly chase after the bills. The film closes with Louis and Emile having reclaimed an idyllic life as aimless hobos.

What is remarkable in this film is that humor and wit is always foremost. The political message of the dehumanizing effect of mechanization is so little heavy-handed that the film is likely to be enjoyed as much by those of conservative political persuasions as by their left-leaning counterparts. Similarly, the incorporation of musical numbers, which was profoundly revolutionary, is undertaken in a manner that never interferes with the progression of the story.

À Nous La Liberté is filmed in black-and-white and in French, with English subtitles for the American release. Its running time is 104 minutes and it is fully suitable for any age group whose interest can be maintained by a film made in 1931. This is not a film for everyone, but will delight those with a taste for films of the silent film era.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older