Synopsis
À nous la liberté (1931) is René Clair's musical satire, free to watch online on iFILM. Two cellmates dig their way out. Only Louis makes it over the wall, and a few years on he owns a sprawling phonograph factory.
His old prison mate Émile drifts back behind bars, then lands a spot on the assembly line of that very plant. The two recognize each other. One gives the orders now; the other clocks in at the belt — and Clair stages the factory, with its bells, foremen and marching workers, as a barely disguised version of the prison yard. Louis built his fortune on a buried past, and the past is closing in.
Shot at the dawn of sound, the film talks less than it sings: Georges Auric's score does the heavy lifting while the machines mime the gags. Its factory sequences sit so close to Chaplin's Modern Times that the Tobis studio filed suit; Clair himself wanted no part of it. Light, tuneful and quietly furious about a world that runs on the factory whistle. Stream À nous la liberté (1931) online on iFILM.
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