À Nous la Liberté
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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À nous la liberté (English: "Freedom for Us") is a 1931 French film, directed by René Clair, concerning the escape of a convict and his subsequent rise up the industrial ladder. With a memorable score by Georges Auric, this film has the most amount of music of any of Clair's early films, making it appear almost like an operetta.
Brief Plot
The film follows the paths of Louis and Émile. At the outset, they are convicts in prison, forced to work on an assembly line. They are separated when Louis manages to escape and eventually becomes the owner of a vast phonograph factory. Through a series of mishaps, Émile finds himself working at the factory (initially not realizing who owns it). The friends reunite; while Émile tries to pursue a love interest (never realized), Louis is threatened by former convicts from the prison, now gangsters. The film climaxes at the dedication of Louis's new phonograph factory, where everyone chases after money which one of the gangsters had stolen from Louis. The film ends with Louis and Émile as tramps, extolling the virtues of freedom.
Chaplin controversy
Charlie Chaplin's film Modern Times bore some similarities to À nous la liberté, such as the conveyor belt gags, and Chaplin was accused of plagiarism. In the end, instead of going to court, they reached a settlement, but the whole controversy took around a decade. Chaplin maintained that he had never seen the film, as did everyone else at the studio. René Clair himself was never a part of the case and was actually quite embarrassed by it, since he had great admiration for Chaplin and had always maintained that they were all in debt to him, and any inspiration Chaplin might have gotten from his film would be an honor for him. A speculation over this case was that it was a conspiracy from Nazi Germany to discredit Chaplin; À Nous la Liberté's production company, Tobis, was German. It is notable that the out-of-court settlement was reached only after the end of World War II.
