À nous la liberté

A part of this view­ing list: Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion Spine #160: René Clair’s À nous la lib­erté.

Ever since I first saw this film a few years ago its cheery theme song comes back as an ear­worm at least once a month. “À nous, à nous, la li-ber-té!” While it is no longer roll-on-the-floor hilar­i­ous, it is still a light-heart­ed and enjoy­able jaunt through an ide­al­ized, not-yet-cyn­i­cal 20th cen­tu­ry indus­tri­al envi­ron­ment. I promise not to fill this review with hyphens, although it might already be too late. Even if Clair made the film today it still might be bereft of the cyn­i­cism, so potent is the joie de vivre of the main char­ac­ters. The plot is rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple, two friends attempt to escape from the pen, but only one makes it, and becomes a suc­cess­ful indus­tri­al­ist. Years lat­er his yuro­di­vy friend ends up work­ing in the same fac­to­ry, even though he’d rather be nap­ping in a field of wild­flow­ers. They rekin­dle their friend­ship, by acci­dent, but the cen­ter can­not hold as oth­er crim­i­nals try to black­mail the escaped con/industrialist.

He man­ages to stave off this doom long enough to bequeath his entire cor­po­ra­tion to the work­ers and escapes with his friend in the ensu­ing windstorm/riot. In a reprise of the theme song at the end, both friends are hap­py as wan­der­ing bums, free as the wind and with as few cares.

While the core of the plot requires lit­tle to think about [as the core of the film is com­e­dy] its appendages are open to many read­ings. Through­out the film, com­par­isons are made between prison life and fac­to­ry life, which you can see in the first two screen shots I’ve pro­vid­ed. Ini­tial­ly all the ref­er­ences to free­dom are made by peo­ple who are, in some way, not free at all. The song is yearn­ing and moti­va­tion­al at these points as opposed to its func­tion as a hymn of rejoic­ing in the end. While the film has an unmiss­able social­ist fla­vor to it, it is less a cri­tique of author­i­ty than a doc­u­ment of man’s ten­den­cy to obsess about order, even unto the loss of free­dom.

Even as an indus­tri­al­ist, Louis, is restrict­ed by the expec­ta­tions of his syco­phants, the need to con­form to the behav­ior that oth­er wealthy peo­ple expect, and his past. He has man­aged to drug him­self with his wealth and it takes the return of Emilé to remind him that life is not about being impor­tant, but about being hap­py and free. This recog­ni­tion like­ly pro­vides the inspi­ra­tion he has to give the new­ly auto­mat­ed fac­to­ry over to the work­ers, who can now spend their days bowl­ing, play­ing cards, fish­ing or danc­ing instead of mak­ing phono­graphs. Despite its focus on free­dom, the film isn’t real­ly exis­ten­tial­ist, since it equates free­dom with a lack of respon­si­bil­i­ty instead of free­dom as respon­si­bil­i­ty itself.

It is claimed and debat­ed that this film was the inspiration/plagiarized for Chap­lin’s Mod­ern Times, but I think that whole dis­cus­sion is miss­ing the point; that in the con­text of the age, there was a need for films as specif­i­cal­ly sim­i­lar as these to be made. Social­ism and the assem­bly line were rel­a­tive­ly new and fresh ideas, ripe with promise and expec­ta­tion. What René Clair cre­ates in À nous la lib­erté is an alloy of the two, where automa­tion leads to utopia and free­dom for all. Despite the now-obvi­ous errors in his idea, À nous la lib­erté’s hope for the future and zest for free­dom remain inspir­ing even 75 years lat­er.

• Cri­te­ri­on Essay by Michael Atkin­son.
• DVD Jour­nal essay by Mark Bourne.
• Sens­es of Cin­e­ma arti­cle by John Flaus.
• DVD Ver­dict essay by Bar­rie Maxwell.
• YouTube clip [a bit sketchy at the begin­ning, but set­tles out].