A Nous La Liberte
FR 104m Dir: Rene Clair
There's a scene in Freedom for Us which felt very familiar. There's a conveyor belt in a factory and when one worker misses doing his job he rushes along the line pushing other workers out of the way and messing up the neat system. It's extremely similar to a scene in Charlie Chaplin's 1936 film Modern Times. Chaplin claims that neither he nor anyone else at the studio had seen this film but eventually it was settled out of court. This film's director, Rene Clair, felt embarrassed by the whole incident and said that any inspiration that Chaplin got from him would be an honour.
It certainly feels like Chaplin must have been inspired by that and other scenes in this film but that idea goes to show you the quality and intelligence of this French precursor to Modern Times.
The story opens in a prison where two prisoners, Emile and Louis work on an assembly line. Louis manages to escape and create a successful career for himself where he runs a factory that makes phonographs. Emile doesn't manage to escape but is eventually seen having left prison and become a tramp. Eventually Emile gets a job at the factory which leads him to meeting Louis again and they have a moment of success until gangsters discover Louis' true identity.
The clever idea about this film is that it depicts life in a factory as pretty much the same as life in prison. It's an interesting film of it's time with most people at the time still working in industry that is now largely absent from the Western world. Louis works to automate the process of his factory, therefore freeing the workers by the end of the film, though it doesn't explore the consequences of the workers therefore losing their jobs.
There's also a fantastic moment when an aging politician gives a long speech about justice and patriotism but is ignored by the crowd as they grab for money that has been blown in on the wind. It's a great piece of symbolism and perhaps highlights a France that had moved on and no longer seemed to care about the values of the revolution that had been so important in the previous century.
The tone shifts wildly here with moments that feel very slapstick, some which are more satiric and others that are just bleak. This is a little jarring at times but when the film leans into the satire it's really great.
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