À nous la liberté
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| À nous la liberté | |
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| Directed by | René Clair |
| Produced by | Frank Clifford |
| Written by | René Clair |
| Starring | Henri Marchand Raymond Cordy Rolla France |
| Music by | Georges Auric |
| Cinematography | Georges Périnal |
| Editing by | René Le Hénaff |
| Distributed by | Films Sonores Tobis |
| Release date(s) |  December 18, 1931 |
| Running time | 104 min / USA:83 min (re-release) / USA:97 min |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| IMDb profile | |
À nous la liberté (English: "Freedom for Us") is a 1931 French film, directed by René Clair, concerning the escape of a convict and his subsequent rise up the industrial ladder. It makes a comment about society through the fact that it depicts industrial working conditions as not much different from being in prison. "More effective in hindsight" as DVD Verdict's Barrie Maxwell put it, "is the film's suggestion of a France oblivious to all going on around it, as portrayed by the sequence in which an aging French politician drones on to his audience about justice and liberty and patriotism, while the audience has long since lost interest preferring instead to concentrate on chasing money that has accidentally fallen out of a bag and is now blowing in the wind." The film had two scenes cut out of it after its original release by its director (many fans of the film, though, have expressed objection over this especially since the cut footage adds up to about ten minutes of "essential" footage).
The film later created controversy with the release of Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times, which bore some similarities to this film -- such as the conveyor belt gags. In the end, instead of going to court, they reached a settlement, but the whole controversy took around a decade. Chaplin maintained that he had never seen the film, as did everyone else at the studio. René Clair himself, was never a part of the case and was actually quite embarrassed by it, since he had great admiration for Chaplin and had always maintained that they were all in debt to him, and any inspiration Chaplin might have gotten from his film would be an honor for him. A speculation over this case was that it was a conspiracy from Nazi Germany to discredit Chaplin; À Nous la Liberté's production company, Tobis, was German. It is notable that the out-of-court settlement was reached only after the end of World War II.
[edit] Cast
- Henri Marchand : Émile
- Raymond Cordy : Louis
- Rolla France : Jeanne
- Paul Ollivier : The uncle
- Jacques Shelly : Paul
- André Michaud : The foreman
- Germaine Aussey : Louis's wife
- Léon Lorin
- William Burke I
- Vincent Hyspa
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- À nous la liberté at the Internet Movie Database
- Criterion Collection essay by Michael Atkinson
- Barrie Maxwell's essay on René Clair at DVD Verdict
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