Á Nous La Liberté

Á Nous La Liberté (1931)

a film by René Claire

What is it?

Called an all-time classic comedy, Á Nous La Liberté is the story of Louis, who escapes prison with the help of his friend Emile to become a wealthy industrialist. He has everything he wanted, a huge business, a trophy wife, influential friends, but his past returns when Emile gets a job in his plant. This is a movie about friendship and about the alienation of man in the industrial society, it is witty and beautiful satire of wealth and industrialization from the early time of sound in cinema.

Memorable scene

The first sequence of this movie is great: from the assembly line, to escape from prison to winning a cycling race, it is surrealist, it is funny, it is narratively powerful and you feel empathy for the characters right away, it has it all.

Gossip:

It is true that this movie was the subject of a law suit in which Tobis, the German distribution company of Á Nous La Liberté, accused Chaplin's Modern Times of plagiarism. Chaplin's film was released five years after this film and although the similarities are evident, René Clair refused to participate in the law suit and claimed that if Chaplin was inspired by his film it would be a honor.
Why is it worth watching this movie?

A Nous La Liberté is a classic piece of its time, it features the social critique and the satire to industrialization and aristocracy, it shows the influence of the vanguards in surrealism inspired visuals and even in the faces of some characters and specially it shows the comedy style inherited from the silent film era.

This movie can be regarded as a left-wing film, but that would be underestimating what is a really optimistic story, in which assembly lines, work and wealth accumulation can not get in the way of friendship and hope. It shows a world in which the machines arrive for making life easier, for creating time and life quality for the workers, creating a world that at the time was the dream of a better world.