A Nous La Liberte

This classic satire on the dehumanization of industrial workers is one of Rene Clair's greatest achievements, preceding Chaplin's indictment of the industrial revolution, MODERN TIMES, by five years. Clair's fast-paced and wickedly funny entertainment centers on the friendship between two prison inmates--Louis (Raymond Cordy), who escapes and becomes a phonograph company tycoon, and Emile (Henri Marchand), who, after he too escapes, is hired at his friend's factory. Filming without a script and giving his actors freedom to improvise, Clair structured his film like an operetta. Georges Auric wrote the music, to which the movements of the assembly lines of actors are...